LD Expert Podcast with Jill Stowell
When Smart Kids Work Harder – And Still Fall Behind
Jill Stowell
Jill Stowell: When a student is obviously smart and capable AND they struggle in school, it’s very easy to think that they just need to put in more effort.
If they’d just tried harder - if they cared more - they could do better on their spelling test, they could get their work in on time, they could get their homework done without dragging it out all day.
It makes sense that more effort would get a better result, and as a parent or teacher of a struggling student, you may have had those thoughts. But I’m guessing that many of you, especially moms, have also had the niggling feeling that there’s something else going on.
If your child works incredibly hard at school — and it still feels like learning takes way more effort than it should, you’re probably right. There’s more to the picture.
So many of the parents who contact our learning centers describe kids who are bright, verbal, thoughtful… and completely exhausted after school.
They’re staying up late to finish homework.
They’re rereading things over and over.
They’re trying — really trying — and somehow it still isn’t getting easier.
And that can leave parents wondering:
Am I missing something?
Is this just how school is for us now?
Do we just keep pushing and hoping it clicks next year?
Today, I want to give you a different way to understand what’s happening — one that I hope brings a little relief.
Welcome to the LD Expert Podcast, your place for answers and solutions for dyslexia and learning differences.
I’m your host, Jill Stowell, founder and executive director of Stowell Learning Centers and author of Take the Stone Out of the Shoe, A Must-Have Guide to Understanding, Supporting, and Correcting Dyslexia, Learning, and Attention Challenges.
One of the most common misconceptions about struggling students is that effort equals progress.
But in learning, effort and efficiency are not the same thing.
Have you ever tried to ride a bike with a flat tire - or even drive a car with a flat tire? It’s possible to do it, but it takes so much more concentration and effort. It’s extremely uncomfortable and the ride doesn’t get smoother, no matter how hard you push or how long you persist.
I remember the mom of a 10-year old girl saying, “I hate homework! She cries and then I cry.” She shared that in spite of the tears and frustration, her daughter would not give up. She said that after working and working on a story, what her daughter read aloud sounded something like this:
“Wo ns apontime ther was a bog but he Was hot a otnary dog ne had poues.”
Can you imagine? How frustrating for the mom and the daughter. They worked so hard on that story and when the girl read it it came out like gibberish.
In my experience, our struggling students are actually putting out far more mental energy and effort than their peers regardless of what it looks like.
This is not an issue of motivation or effort.
It’s that the skills that make learning efficient aren’t working smoothly.
I want to pause here, because this is really important.
When I say “skills,” I don’t mean things like math facts or reading comprehension strategies. I’m talking about the brain skills that learning is built on — things like:
- how efficiently a child takes in information
- how quickly they can process it
- how well they understand language
- how easily they can focus, remember, and use what they’ve learned
The other day, I looked at the school testing for a 4th grade boy. He’s a second language learner, so everyone has assumed that his struggles with reading, spelling, and comprehension are related to not being fluent in English. He’s been given English as a second language instruction daily for 2 years but nothing is changing so he basically just kind of disappears in class. He’s super quiet, he’s completely lost, and no one knows what to do with him.
When I looked at the errors he was making with listening, speaking, reading, and spelling, I could see that this isn’t simply a second language problem, this is an auditory processing problem. He can hear, but his brain isn’t making sense out of what he’s hearing - he seems to get the first two sounds in words, often, but he can’t process the rest of the sounds. They get out of order or drop out completely.
So, think about when you have a really spotty cell phone connection. You’re getting some words but only a few sounds in others. So you put a lot of energy into trying to piece it together, but pretty soon, it’s just gone. You’ve lost the thread of the conversation.
That’s what an auditory processing problem can be like. No wonder this boy was lost and not progressing! He wasn’t getting clear and accurate information to think with. This isn’t an effort problem, it’s a skills problem.
These brain skills, like auditory processing, memory, or attention, are not skills that are taught directly in school. Kids go to school and it’s just assumed that these skills are already in place.
When they’re not, which research tells us is about 30% of the population, kids compensate.
So here’s what compensation might look like:
- working longer than peers
- needing constant reminders
- or relying heavily on their parents.
It can also look like being the class clown, refusing to do work, or melting down at the end of the day.
And here’s the part that’s so important for parents to hear:
Compensation can hide the real problem.
Grades may be okay.
Teachers may say, “They’re capable.”
Everyone assumes the child just needs more time, more maturity, more effort.
But on the inside, the child is burning far more energy than they should just to keep up. They’re forming an identity that says, “I’m not smart. I’m not good at school. Something is wrong with me.”
This is why we see so many bright kids who lose confidence over time — not because they aren’t capable, but because learning feels disproportionately hard.
When our kids struggle, whether we’re parents or teachers, we want to help them.
This is where I want to gently challenge something that many parents, many families, have been told.
A lot of support options – tutoring, special education – a lot of support options focus on helping kids manage school — more time, more strategies, more accommodations, more reminders.
Those supports can be helpful.
But they don’t change how learning works.
When the brain skills underneath learning don’t improve, support often has to stay in place indefinitely.
Changing how the brain handles learning, so effort actually pays off makes the difference between help and life change.
Parents often find us after having done years of tutoring and one of the questions they consistently ask is, “Hey, we’ve given all this support. Why hasn’t this been resolved yet?”
It hasn't been resolved, because the skills that are actually at the root of the problem haven’t been addressed.
Schools in many states are now required to do dyslexia screening and provide intervention for students who are found to be “at risk” or showing significant struggles with reading and spelling.
This is new territory for many schools and teachers. I was helping a teacher who had just done dyslexia screening with her school’s 4th and 5th graders. I was helping her to understand what she was looking at and what might indicate dyslexia. She has a really good sense about it and described the interventions that the state has put in place to help these “at risk” students at her school, but when I listened to her, my heart just sank.
The interventions are well-meaning and good, but they don’t go deep enough. They address the symptoms we can see, but they don’t touch the brain skills at the root of the problem. They’re working basically at the tip of the iceberg and my fear is that in spite of all the extra support, these identified kids are still going to be struggling two years from now, or five years from now.
Before we wrap up today, I want to pull a few important ideas together.
First, when a bright child is struggling, effort is rarely the real problem. In fact, many of these kids are already working much harder than their peers — they’re just doing it inefficiently.
Second, the skills that make learning work — things like auditory and visual processing, attention, memory, and processing speed — are not taught directly in school. School assumes they’re already in place. When they’re not, kids compensate. They work longer, rely more on support, and use far more mental energy trying to keep up.
And third, there’s an important difference between help that allows a child to manage school and intervention that actually changes how learning works. Support can be helpful, and we want to support our kids. But when the underlying skills don’t improve, that support often has to stay in place indefinitely.
So what does this mean for you as a parent?
If your child is bright and capable, but learning consistently feels harder than it should, it may be time to ask a different question.
Not, “How do we help them get through school?” but, “What’s making learning take so much effort in the first place?”
That shift — from managing school to understanding how your child’s brain is processing information — is often where real relief begins.
And I want to say this, especially for parents who have been waiting: waiting doesn’t mean you’ve failed your child. Most families wait because they’ve been told to. But waiting isn’t neutral. When learning stays inefficient year after year, kids often internalize the struggle and start to believe that school is supposed to feel this hard — or that something is wrong with them.
When the right skills are addressed, change doesn’t have to take forever. In fact, addressing learning skills directly often shortens the journey rather than extending it.
If there’s one thing I hope you take away today, it’s this: struggle is information. It’s not a lack of effort, and it’s not a character flaw. When learning takes more work than it should, something underneath deserves attention — and when that something is addressed, school and life can start to feel different.
At Stowell Learning Centers, we help children and adults move beyond learning and attention challenges — including dyslexia — by strengthening the underlying skills that make learning easier.
When those skills get stronger, everything changes — reading, writing, focus, confidence, even the stress around school.
I can’t believe I’m saying this, but many families are already thinking about summer.
Summer can be a great opportunity — because it gives us time to work on learning skills without the daily demands of school competing for attention.
For parents who want to use that time to make big changes in a relatively short period of time, we do offer summer intensives, focusing progress into a shorter period of time and building real momentum for the year ahead. If you want to learn more or explore if this option is right for your child, you can find information at stowellcenter.com/summer.
Thank you for taking the time to listen today. If this episode encouraged you, please like, subscribe, and share it with another parent who needs to know that lasting change is possible.
