Is It a "Can't" or a "Won't"?

How to tell the difference between a lagging skill and learned helplessness

In my work with parents raising neurodivergent kids, one of the most common questions I get is, “How do I know what is their disability and what is just refusal?” We have to remember that when children (and adults) refuse to do something, there is usually a reason beyond frustrating the person who is asking. When a child resists a task, they are often fatigued, unmotivated, disinterested, or the task is too hard, too fast, or too much.

Let’s look beyond “non-compliance” to uncover what is really going on. When parenting children with asynchronous skills, there is no specific timeline of milestones to follow. It’s hard to predict when a certain skill will develop, so we have to reframe our expectations from chronological time to developmental time.

Instead of thinking, “My child should be able to do this because they are 12 years old” think, “My child seems ready to unload the dishwasher independently because they haven’t needed my help with that task in months.”

As parents and teachers supporting neurodivergent children in a standardized world, it’s our job to help them meet their full potential by flexing the expectations to meet them just beyond their comfort zone, but not so far that their overwhelm leads to shutdown. Finding this balance takes practice for parents and teachers, but it’s one of the most important ways we can show up for our kids.

Before explaining this further, I want to acknowledge the children and families who are currently in survival mode. My own family has been through seasons of survival mode. We can’t teach new skills when we are in this survival state because we’re trying to get our child to stop hitting, or to start eating, or to sleep enough, or to get out of the car and into the school building. These are big, necessary goals in the life of a child and goals of daily independence and learning academic skills tend to go by the wayside until these essential goals of routine and safety are stabilized.

But once the dust settles, and it will settle, parents and teachers often struggle to set expectations for neurodivergent children. The reason why is two-fold. First, when we’ve seen a child struggle repeatedly with developmental skills, we can think, “Why would I cause them to struggle more by not helping them put on their jacket to go outside?” Second, if a child is quick to have emotional outbursts and likely to go into fight or flight at the sight of a challenge, we may have been conditioned to lower our expectations to calm the outburst.

Sometimes, parents will do anything to avoid another outburst because it’s so emotionally difficult for everyone involved, but we need to be careful to not enable. For example, even when a child is capable of independence, her initial protest may trigger something in her parents that remind them of intense meltdowns of the past. They want to avoid these emotions, so they quickly help to avoid the emotional reaction. But, if they help her sometimes and require independence at other times, she isn’t receiving clear messaging on expectations which can confuse children. So, the best strategy is to figure out if it’s a “can’t” (lagging skill) or a “won’t” (learning helplessness).

The Difference Between a Lagging Skill and Learned Helplessness

At times, we do need to pick our battles, but consistently giving in can lead to learned helplessness. Learned helplessness evolves when we have conditioned our children to expect us to do something for them and, therefore, they don’t even try doing it themselves. 

I fell into this trap myself when we were always in a rush out the door in the morning and I was helping my then 4 year old with his shoes so we could get going. One morning, he was lying in the floor whining, “But I just can’t do it without you!” It was his intense dramatization of the moment that got my attention and I thought, “Of course you can, but I haven’t taught you how!” So, we built in extra time for him to put on his shoes while I stood nearby, coaching him and encouraging him, validating his frustrated feelings along the way. This led to him feeling proud instead of helpless. And, yes, we were late some days. If being on time is important, practice these emerging skills of independence on the weekends and wait until the still is automatic for your child to include it in the weekday morning routine.

Learned helplessness can also look like a middle school child not writing down an assignment because they know you will be able to look it up online for them. Or, not confronting their teacher about a test grade in high school, because they know you will email the teacher and handle the situation. You know your child best. If you step back and think, “My child could learn how to do this if I coached them,” then it’s likely learned helplessness.

But when is it a lagging skill connected to asynchronous development? Your best answer for this is to follow the profile determined in a developmental or psycho-educational evaluation. This is one of the reasons evaluations are so important. Once you understand a child’s strengths and needs for support, you will know where you can push for independence and where to teach. But, even without an evaluation, here’s how to tell: If you push too hard on a lagging skill, a child will likely become defeated and give up, leading to emotional stress and negative self-talk. If you hear negative self-talk, it’s likely a lagging skill. 

And, just to add to the confusion, it may not be the lagging skill you think. I see this often when consulting with teachers. If a child is complaining about doing schoolwork but YOU KNOW they understand the academic work, the lagging skill might actually their ability to pay attention at that time of day, complete work that is not of interest to them, or they may understand the concepts but struggle with fine motor weakness to write their responses. Let’s get curious and figure out what is getting in their way.

Finding a Child’s Range of Independence

Every child has their own range of independence. I agree with Jessica Lahey, author of “The Gift of Failure,” who recommends figuring out what your child can do and help them put their toe slightly over that line into the next, more-challenging skill. I often break this idea down into three categories: 

• INDEPENDENCE: What your child can do without support. These are set as expectations within the family and the classroom because they are mastered skills.

• LEARNING: What your child is learning and needs coaching on and strategies to complete. Children may receive external rewards while they are learning these skills to promote motivation until they are intrinsically motivated by the satisfied feeling of accomplishment. 

• LAGGING SKILL: What your child is not yet capable of doing developmentally. These are tasks you are not even asking your child to do yet because they are lagging skills that have not yet developed. If a child receives a consequence or doesn’t earn a reward because of a lagging skill, they will likely feel defeated, engage in negative self-talk, and become avoidant to tasks set before them because not trying is easier than trying and failing. 

Expect a child to independently do what they are already capable of without support. Your child will likely need coaching and external rewards (at first) when learning and practicing new skills. When you see a LAGGING SKILL emerging, move it to the LEARNING list. Same goes for LEARNING skills. When your child masters that skill, they no longer need to be externally rewarded for it so move it to the INDEPENDENCE list.

The goal is for your child to be intrinsically rewarded by feeling proud of themselves which is much more powerful in the long run than any points, dollars, or prizes you can provide. 

Let’s Stay Connected!

~Dr. Emily

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