By J. Bailey Molineux

Imagine, if you will, that you are -fifteen years old, in the eighth grade, but failing in school. In fact, for most of your academic life, you have received D's and F's, with an occasional C and a rare B. Through the years you have fallen further and further behind in your school work, so that now you are reading at the fifth grade level, spelling at the sixth grade level, and doing math at the fourth grade level. Yet, you are expected to do work at the eighth, grade level.

Your teachers have been dedicated, helpful, and sympathetic, but what else could they have done? They had too many other students in their classes to have given you enough individual attention, and they had to give you low grades even though they knew it served no useful purpose because you just weren't doing the work that was expected of your age group.

You really don't know, and probably don't care, why you have fallen so far behind in school, but there are a number of possible causes for your academic difficulties. You might be a "slow learner". Or you might be of average or above average intelligence, but suffer from a specific learning disability. Or you might have a visual or auditory handicap that has gone undetected. Or you might have an emotional problem that interferes with your ability to learn.

Whatever the cause of your having slipped behind in your school work, imagine how frustrated, discouraged, and defeated you must feel. Years and years of failure and low grades have eroded your confidence and sense of worth, leaving you bitter, anxious, resentful and a ripe candidate for anti-social behavior. You can't wait until the day when you can leave school, but the law says that you have to be sixteen before you can quit. And so you sit in school day after day, hating yourself, your classmates, and your teachers, and too disheartened and angry to learn much of anything.

You probably aren't involved in too many school activities or clubs, and so have no real ties to your school. Having been retained one or two times in elementary school, you are older than your classmates and so don't have much in common with them, Your real friends are probably those kids who have already dropped out of school, since they have suffered the same frustrations and defeats as you, and so give you a sense that you are not alone.

More likely than not, your parents probably dropped out of school themselves, and so never encouraged you to study hard or get good grades. There are probably serious emotional problems in your family and a higher incidence of divorce than in families whose young people stay in school: In short, your family is probably one in which there is not much communication, mutual support or understanding.

Once you reach age sixteen and drop out of school, what do you do then? Well, the chances are ten times higher that you will get in trouble with the law than if you had remained in school. And this is not surprising. You have been hurt and defeated by society, and so you want to strike back. You have no skills or education with which to find a good job, so you will probably find only low paying, menial, non-rewarding work if you are lucky. What is more likely is that you will find no employment at all and so will be bored and restless, without anything to do all day but get into trouble.

When you dropped out of school you were not heading towards a better life; you were simply getting out of a situation that you thought intolerable. What can be done to help you? Probably not much right now except to give you some vocational or technical training so as to give you a skill or trade that will enable you to earn a decent living. Help should have come earlier, when you were in elementary school, and starting to slip behind. If only your academic problems could have been detected and corrected then, but that would have cost more money, and people's taxes were too high already, and so, understandably, they didn't want to spend more money on education. Hence, there were not enough services or personnel to give you the help you needed.

But - and this is the real irony in your story - if you can't find a decent job and so turn to crime, alcohol, or the welfare office for support, society will still have to pay because you failed in life. And if you remain poor and uneducated, the chances are that your children will follow in your footsteps.

By J. Bailey Molineux

Your child is doing poorly in school. Either his behavior is disruptive or his academic performance is not what you think it should be.

You don't know what his problem is, or if he really has one, but you're determined to look into the matter and do something about it. You want your child to have the best possible education.

What are your options? What services does your local school offer? What can you do to insure that your child receives those services if he needs them?

The first thing you should do is contact your school officials. Let them know about your concerns and ask them to check on your child. Montana law requires that your child be thoroughly evaluated for possible problems if you request it.

Whatever your concern, there are a variety of professionals, either employed by your school or available to it, to evaluate your child, diagnose his problem and suggest a remedy.

Your child will be evaluated by a number of different professional people depending upon the nature of your concern. For example, a psychologist might test your child for intellectual or emotional problems. A social worker or psychiatrist might interview him for emotional or behavioral problems. A speech therapist might look for speech or hearing problems, while a special educator might test for academic or educational problems.

Each professional will then report her findings to the team assigned to evaluate your child in order to arrive at an accurate, comprehensive diagnosis and treatment plan. This team approach will guarantee that all aspects of your child's problem will have been thoroughly evaluated and that the best possible remedial program will have been designed for your youngster.

Montana law also requires that your child be given competent, professional treatment or services if these are necessary. Many programs are available for your child should he be diagnosed as having a specific problem that requires professional intervention.

Special education programs are designed to remediate academic problems. Medical consultation and physical therapy are available for medical or physical problems. Mental health consultation or services can be offered for emotional problems, and residential programs can be provided for those rare problems that require such treatment.

In short, whatever service your child needs he can receive. Treatment or remedial programs are available for your child but you must see that he receives them.

The earlier that problems are detected, the better the chances they will be successfully treated, so if you are concerned about your child's behavior or performance in school, consult with your local school official as soon as possible. They are there to serve you and your children.

If your child does in fact have a problem that requires treatment or remediation, the longer you wait to have it diagnosed, the harder it may be to correct it.

By J. Bailey Molineux

Thirteen year old Johnny is failing in school. His parents, hoping that he will go to college, are frantic about his grades, while his teachers are puzzled and discouraged.

There are several possible reasons to account for Johnny's academic failures. He may be intellectually slow or even mildly retarded, and so not have the capability to keep up with his classmates.

Johnny may be one of those many unfortunate, hard-to-place students who is below average in intelligence, but not so far below that he qualifies for special education. Hence, he is placed in a classroom with intellectually average or above average students where it is hard, or impossible, for him to do the work as his classmates.

Or Johnny may be of average intelligence, or even higher, yet suffer from a specific learning disability.

It has been estimated that there are approximately fifty skills or abilities involved in the learning and communication processes. A deficiency in one or more of those skills may result in academic difficulties.

For example, one such skill is the ability to remember what you have seen in the order in which you have seen it, as when you learn that A follows C and T follows A in the word CAT. If you have difficulty remembering what you have seen in the correct order, you will have problems learning to read and spell. Learning disabilities have to be detected early - before high school - if they are to be corrected. Unhappily, most research has shown that students with learning disabilities do not benefit that much from remedial help during their high school years. The time when they could have benefited from such help has passed, so it is important that learning disabilities be detected in elementary school.

Another possible cause of Johnny's poor grades may be that he suffers from a visual or auditory problem. If he can't see or hear adequately, it would be difficult for him to learn what is taught in school.

But let us assume that Johnny is not slow or retarded, he does not suffer from a specific learning disability, and that his vision and hearing are intact. If so, we then have to look for emotional or psychological factors to account for his academic failures.

Johnny may not be rewarded for good grades or encouraged to study. Perhaps, academic interests are not important to his parents and so they don't encourage him to keep his grades up or model scholarly behavior.

What is more likely the case, however, is that Johnny is not encouraged or rewarded for good grades by his peers. In most schools today, there are probably more rewards for the popular student or athletic star than for the good student. Pep rallies and Sunday morning headlines are for the athlete and not for the scholar. And few girls are chosen to be prom queen because of their grade point average.

Johnny's poor grades may, also, be his way of rebelling or of expressing hostility towards his parents, whom he may consider to be too strict or harsh. If grades are important to his parents, he can defy them by doing absolutely nothing. They can make him stay in his room with his homework assignments, or take away privileges if he fails to improve his grades, but they can't make him learn.

Or Johnny may have emotional problems that interfere with his ability to learn. If he has a negative opinion of himself and thinks of himself as "dumb", even though he is not, he may not want to try to improve his grades for fear that he would still fail and thereby confirm his view of himself. That motivation can only come from himself. By not studying, he can still salvage some scraps of self-esteem by arguing to himself that he didn't really try. But to try and still fail would be to irreparably damage his sense of worth.

About the Author: J. Bailey Molineux, a psychologist with Adult and Child Counseling, has incorporated many of his articles in a book, Loving Isn't Easy, Isbn 1587410419, sold through bookstores everywhere or available directly from Selfhelpbooks.com. Copyright 2002, J. Bailey Molineux and Selfhelpbooks.com, all rights reserved. This article may be reprinted but must include authors copyright and website hyperlinks.