Your teen does everything right. Homework done. Pays attention. Stays organized. Has study skills. And still struggles with tests. Sound familiar? You’re not alone, and this is not your kid’s fault. In this episode of “Ask Lisa,” clinical psychologist Dr. Lisa Damour and Reena Ninan dig into one of the most frustrating and confusing problems parents face: the capable, motivated teen who just can’t seem to perform on assessments.
May 19, 2026 | 32 min
Transcript | Why Is My Teen Bombing Tests?
The Ask Lisa Podcast does not constitute medical advice and is not a substitute for professional mental health advice, diagnosis or treatment. If you have concerns about your child’s well-being, consult a physician or mental health professional.
The following transcript has been automatically generated by an AI system and should be used for informational purposes only. We cannot guarantee the accuracy, completeness, or timeliness of the information provided.
Reena Ninan:
My son, a 14-year-old freshman in high school, shows up ready to learn, does his homework, but when it comes to taking tests, he bombs. It seems like this kid is doing everything right.
Dr. Lisa Damour:
Well, you would think. This is really, really common when kids transition to high school, the way they’re most likely to study for tests are the least effective ways to study.
Reena Ninan:
How do I get him to change how he studies?
Dr. Lisa Damour:
Okay, so let’s lay out the steps.
Reena Ninan:
This week we’re talking about bombing tests. I was a horrible test taker, Lisa.
Dr. Lisa Damour:
Well, test taking is a skill unto itself and it’s not one that we necessarily teach. And at this time of year when finals are coming around, suddenly everybody starts to feel panicked. The kids do, sometimes their folks do, about the fact that it’s not clear that my student knows how to actually prepare adequately for tests.
Reena Ninan:
And I just wonder how many of us adults, if we had learned some study skillsets back in the day when they really weren’t teaching this kind of thing, could that make us better in our work and life in general?
Dr. Lisa Damour:
100%.
Reena Ninan:
Right? So we’re going to dig into the science today and I can’t wait because this is on so many parents’ minds because you make the transition from middle school to high school, high school to college. There’s a lot there. I want to read you this letter, Lisa.
Dear Dr. Lisa and Reena, my son, a 14-year-old freshman in high school is a great kid, has many friends, great social life, plays on the freshman basketball team. He’s an organized kid at home. Room is not messy, keeps his belongings together. He has two homes and does a great job remembering what he needs when he makes his transition to each house. In school, the teacher says he is well liked, shows up ready to learn, does his homework, participates appropriately, is respectful. But when it comes to taking tests, he bombs. I asked him how he’s preparing and he gets frustrated and says he’s got it. I try to offer suggestions and that backfires, but I can see he is struggling. It’s as if he thinks if he does the classwork, homework, participates, et cetera, he should just do well on the tests. To me, it seems as if he’s walking in circles in his head, staring at the work and doesn’t know how to study, doesn’t know where to start. He wants to do well though. If it was one subject, I’d just get him a tutor, but it’s not that simple. I’m afraid he’s missing a critical part of problem solving or executive functioning that will alter his adult life. What can I do to help him? He has so many things going for him. This is the missing link. Help.
Lisa, how common is this, especially when you make the transition to high school?
Dr. Lisa Damour:
Okay. I’m going to answer that, but like, okay, just what a great letter. I just want to take a minute.
I love what people send us. They are absolutely brilliant letters. And what I’m loving about this letter is the letter writer ruled out all sorts of things I would need to know. Is the kid disorganized elsewhere? Is the kid cutting up in class? The letter writer did such a beautiful job of honing in on this. It’s the tests. This kid is falling apart on tests, which makes it really easy. I mean, that’s not a simple problem, but she has effectively, I assume it’s a mom, I don’t know if it’s a mom. The letter writer’s effectively ruled out all of the other things that we would go hunting for. The kid isn’t paying attention or whatever. I mean, it sounds like it’s tests. Okay. I love that this is a 14-year-old boy transitioning to high school because I think this is really, really common when kids transition to high school suddenly and you know this, you’ve got a ninth grader. The nature of schoolwork changes and suddenly there are finals. And I’m thinking about families who are getting ready for finals right now and the family get ready for their kid to take finals embracing for it. And the stakes go up on tests whereas in middle school and this kid actually may have been fine in middle school, maybe the tests aren’t that big a deal or they basically repeat things that the kid has already had drilled into them. The transition to high school does and should involve tests taking on new weight and tests becoming more complicated. Often it’s tests asking students to work with material in new ways to apply concepts in ways they haven’t in class already. So it’s not at all unusual to see kids who have been sort of chugging along just fine academically, suddenly get to high school and have a big hiccup around their ability to take tests.
It’s not that rare.
Reena Ninan:
So what’s your advice here? Because it seems like this kid is doing everything right.
Dr. Lisa Damour:
Well, he may be doing school. He may be doing the day-to-day of school just fine. I want to throw in one caveat just to think about together before drilling really into what is a kid supposed to do in these situations or what can a parent try to advise? Which is sometimes when I have a family bring up concern like this my way, they’re like, “Incredibly great student who’s bombing tests.”
And then when I scrape away at it a little bit, the incredibly great student is getting A’s on the homework and A minuses or B pluses on the tests and it may actually be like perfectly fine, perfectly appropriate academically. So I’m going to take this letter at face value that this kid is doing really well academically and then there’s a huge gap between what he’s accomplishing with his homework and what he’s turning in on the test because I see that.
I know that also happens, but I just want to throw in there “bombing” means different things to different people and schools will tell you usually if they’re worried about your kid, schools are not usually worried about a kid who’s strong on homework and then gets slightly lower points on tests. And I just want to think that through. Okay. So wait, what’d you ask me again? Tell me the question.
Reena Ninan:
Well, I want to drill into what the parent does here, but I had a question about first boys versus girls. When they’re starting high school, do you see any difference in gender here?
Dr. Lisa Damour:
Statistically we do. Like when we look at the data and we do. And the reason being, Reena, okay, so this kid is 14. One of the rules, and this is shifting in time and getting younger, especially for girls, the modal age of onset for girls of puberty. So the most frequent age of which girls hit puberty is 12. The modal age of onset for boys is 14. This is why ninth grade boys can be shaving and look like full grown adults or they can look like middle schoolers and they can even look like young middle schoolers. So you get this huge diversity in ninth grade boys that you don’t see in ninth grade girls, that you see some, but like most ninth grade girls have moved, are well into puberty. Puberty comes with neurological growth, neurological growth that makes school different for kids. It lets them have more intellectual firepower.
It lets them understand the consequences of their behaviors in a different kind of way. And so part of what we’re up against is that there are plenty of, especially ninth grade boys who just have not crossed that neurological threshold. And so they just aren’t working with the same cognitive equipment as the average girl. Now, of course, kids are all over the map and there’s like very immature girls and very mature boys. It’s not that. But on balance, if you stopped a ninth grade teacher in the hall and were like, “In general, who are your students who are on top of it, know exactly what to do and who are less likely to be?” They’ll be like, “Oh yeah, the girls in general in the ninth grade are more likely to be on top of it.”
Reena Ninan:
I think it was the end of last season was the end of last season, our season ender was a great one about how you were teaching like, you want the kid to unload the dishwasher, you need to show them. They’re not going to magically know just because you have been doing it for 30 years doesn’t mean they have been, right? They haven’t. So what’s the problem here? Is it about executive functioning? Where does this kid even begin to start?
Dr. Lisa Damour:
Where are the wheels coming off here, right?
Reena Ninan:
Yeah.
Dr. Lisa Damour:
Okay. So it’s actually not executive functioning. And the reason I know that is there were several pieces of the letter. The room is organized and actually the thing that I was like, okay, this kid is actually okay on executive functioning. And I’ll drill into what executive functioning really is, is that he’s got two homes and is moving back and forth between them and has the stuff he needs and the teachers say he’s on top of things in class.
So executive functioning, the way we often talk about it, it’s like the air traffic control of running your life. It’s like having things organized and there’s got lots of components, but like some of the big ones are like working memory and this kid is showing working memory, which involves planning. So like, I’m going to be over at the other house so I need to take this, this and this.
Okay. So working memory is great. It involves cognitive flexibility, being able to change gears. Again, if a kid can move between two homes and knows what to bring and can do stuff and even in class is able to do this assignment and then that assignment and doing fine on them, that’s good. He’s in good shape on that. And then another huge category that we talk about with executive functioning and this one I can really struggle with is inhibitory control. So it’s basically, you know how you’re like, “Squirrel,” right? As soon as you’re looking at one thing and then you remember like something else you were supposed to do, like I will interrupt myself constantly to like hop into my calendar or go to my to- do list or make a call. I really should have just stayed on the thing I was doing until I was done.
So I actually don’t think the issue here is executive functioning, but it’s a good rule out as we say clinically. It’s a good thing to be like, okay, it’s not that. Okay, but then what is it?
Okay. So here my superhero, my academic superhero, and I’m going to draw on his work quite a bit, is this cognitive psychologist named Daniel Willingham. He’s at UVA. His work is gorgeous, Reena. This is a brilliant psychologist who has done beautiful, beautiful work on learning and memory, but then translates it so effectively for broad audiences. So he has several books. We’ll put them in the show notes. One is, Why Don’t Students Like School? And it really explains what it is on the education side that we could be doing differently. And there’s another book that I was thinking about here called Outsmart Your Brain and it’s about how to study. It’s about how to learn and study. And it’s directed-
Reena Ninan:
Interesting.
Dr. Lisa Damour:
At students. And it’s brilliant. Outsmart your brain is I think tipped a little more towards very light high school and then college learning. It’s a lot about taking in lectures, things like that. But the piece that he talks about, and this is so essential and I want to run us through it. Why do kids struggle with tests when they are strong students overall? He answers that question and I’m going to share it. I want to separate that from what should this kid be doing from how does the parent get him to do it? Those are two different questions.
Reena Ninan:
Good point.
Dr. Lisa Damour:
But for starters, what should he be doing? Okay. So one of the things that we know about the science of studying is that in general, not just boys, like kids across the board, usually study for tests the way they’re most likely to study for tests are the least effective ways to study. Okay. So Reena, do you remember how you studied? It was time for a test. What did you do?
Reena Ninan:
Yes. Cramming, memorization, a lot of memorization is what I remember.
Dr. Lisa Damour:
Okay. Memorization like with flashcards or memorization like going over your materials? What were you doing?
Reena Ninan:
I was a big flashcard person in Spanish and history. Yes. And then math, which was my worst subject, I just was doing worksheets over and over again to try to get the concept in.
Dr. Lisa Damour:
Okay. So you actually lean towards what most students don’t do. Most students reread their notes, they reread the text. They may even rewrite their notes. They may highlight. That’s a lot of what kids do. They’re like, “I’m studying. I’m going over it all. I’m rewriting it all. I’m highlighting key passages.”
Reena Ninan:
Yeah, because that kind of gets into your brain, you’d think, right? That’s why they’re doing it.
Dr. Lisa Damour:
What you would think, that’s the key word. You would think. So what Willingham is so good at highlighting is you have to actually test memory in order to make memories. You actually have to try to retrieve stuff when it’s not right in front of you. And that’s why going over your notes doesn’t do much because you’re looking at your notes. It doesn’t get it into your head because it’s right there on the paper. And the things that really need to happen and you did them, I bet there’s a way if you had had good coaching, you could have done them even more. The things that need to happen is actually students need to write the questions they think will be on the test, which is enormously hard to do because looking at your notes versus being asked to apply what you’ve learned to some novel concept. So they need to use past tests to be like, “Okay, what are the kinds of questions we get asked?” They need to write those out on flashcards or somewhere and then they need to flip it over and they need to write the whole answer and then they need to test themselves where they’re looking at potential questions and as many as they can across as much of the material as possible and then they have to try to generate it without looking at any of their notes.
It’s the making your memory.
Reena Ninan:
That’s a lot though!
Dr. Lisa Damour:
Well, that’s the issue.
Reena Ninan:
It’s like create the flashcards or whatever that are potential questions, run through them in your mind, that’ll help seal the deal. It’s a lot. I mean, that is a lot.
Dr. Lisa Damour:
It’s a lot. And that’s why students don’t do it. And he has this terrific analogy. I think this is so brilliant. I was actually, my husband’s a teacher. I was like, “You have to listen to this analogy. It’s so perfect.”
Reena Ninan:
Cool.
Dr. Lisa Damour:
So what he described is the things that you’re supposed to do, like really like, I”‘m going to sit here and think about what are all the questions the teacher could possibly ask on this material and then I’m going to write those down and then I’m going to answer those questions and then I’m going to write that down and then I’m going to quiz myself until I’ve got it cold.” It’s like if you’re like, “I want to get better at pushups.” And the equivalent to what I just described in test preparation is doing super hard pushups. Pushups, you know those where like where you try to clap in between the pushups, right?
Reena Ninan:
Yes.
Dr. Lisa Damour:
Or you put one arm behind your back and you try to do the pushups. Okay, really, really hard. Who wants to do that, right?
Reena Ninan:
Who can do that? I mean, are you clapping between your pushups? Is there something you haven’t told me?
Dr. Lisa Damour:
No, no. But if I wanted to get better at pushups, that is what I would do. But instead what I do in the gym and what students do instead is I do the easier thing that feels like something. So I’m like, “You know what? I’m just going to bang out a bunch of pushups on my knees.” You know how easy it is to do pushup on … It’s not that hard, right? But it feels like you’re doing something.
Reena Ninan:
Well, speak for yourself, but okay.
Dr. Lisa Damour:
But you know what I mean.
Reena Ninan:
I’m proud of my pushups on my knees.
Dr. Lisa Damour:
Okay. But what if you did them way past what you … It’s a matter of-
It feels productive, but relative to really hard pushups that are actually going to improve your pushup skills, it’s actually not that productive. And so when students are going over their notes, highlighting the text, they’re doing knee pushups. They’re like, “Look, I’m studying. I’m studying.” Whereas what Willingham is saying is, “No, no, no. You got to be doing clap pushups. You got to do one arm pushups. Even if it’s hard, that’s actually how you improve.” And so this is unfortunately for students, this is settled science. No one is debating that the way to prepare for tests is to do the clap pushups.
Now, this gets to the second problem of like, but how do you convince a kid to do this, right? So I have a ninth grader. I have a ninth grader who so far is doing okay on tests. I have so much empathy for the parent who wrote this letter because if I rolled up on my kid saying, “You know what you should do, you should sit there and come up with a whole bunch of cards about the kinds of questions that you think the teacher’s going to ask and then you got to write them.” And then if I’m like, “You know what, clap pushups going forward?” She would actually roll on the floor laughing. She’d be like, “You got-
Reena Ninan:
Not gonna work.
Dr. Lisa Damour:
I’m not going to do it.”
Reena Ninan:
So what do you do then? How do we, knowing the science and the research behind it, what’s like that? You always talk about half steps. What is that half step we as parents can take to move them in the right direction to get those study skills?
Dr. Lisa Damour:
There’s two assets in this letter that I think the family has to work with. The best asset is, I think the letter said like he wants to do well. This is a kid who already-
Reena Ninan:
Motivated.
Dr. Lisa Damour:
So that gets you to the 10 yard line. I mean, if the kid were like, “Yeah, I’m bombing tests and I don’t care.” Okay, now you have a whole other set of problems. And we’ve actually done episodes on that. When my kid doesn’t care about school and can I bribe him and all of that.
Reena Ninan:
Yes.
Dr. Lisa Damour:
Okay. So the kid cares. So oh, thank goodness because this makes it a lot easier. The other is, and he’s doing badly. So if he cared and we’re doing well, there’s no problem. If he were doing badly and didn’t care, you’ve got a big problem. You have a kid who says he cares, but he’s actually doing poorly. And there was something in the letter that I thought was so lovely where the parent says, “He says he’s got it. He says he’s got it. And yet I’m looking at him struggle and clearly from the grades he doesn’t have it.”
So here I think that there’s a couple of ways that parents could walk up to this that actually stand a chance. So the first is starting from the kid’s own desire to do well, right? Rather than have it be like, “What’s going on? You should be getting better grades on your test.” You’re already down a road of the kid being like, “Why are you on my case? I’m trying. Leave me alone.” It’s not going to work.
So I think that the first overture is to say, “Hey buddy, you want to be doing well on the tests. I see that and I see this as frustrating for you.” So you’re his ally, not his pushup coach. And then when the kid’s like, “Yeah, yeah, yeah, I got it. ” My favorite line that I use clinically is to say, “Well, but what you’re doing isn’t working.” I say that all the time.
Reena Ninan:
And that works?
Dr. Lisa Damour:
What you’re doing-
It does because it’s short. And one of the things that I’ve had happen clinically over the years is that families come in and they’ve got a challenge, which is why they’re even meeting with me and they’ll describe at length what they’re trying and they’ll describe what they’re onto now that’s they’re trying because the other things haven’t worked and they’ll describe whatever it is like grounding the kid or sticker charts or whatever. And when it’s not working, they’ll do more of it. And so I’ve often said, “Yeah, yeah, yeah. I see how hard everybody is working to try to fix this, but what you’re doing isn’t working.” And then what’s an easy follow on is, “So you have to try something else or we’re going to have to try something else.” So that’s where I would go as an opening. Okay. So you also have a ninth grader.
Does this feel promising to you as the parent of a real live ninth grader?
Reena Ninan:
Yeah, I think being able to explain what works so it’s not trial and error, right? That helps. And saying there are science, people have studied this, here’s what works. But I feel like what I’m missing is how do I get him to change how he studies?
Dr. Lisa Damour:
Okay. You’re bringing to mind something that I think we often blow past that I have found to be absolutely essential. Okay. So if the opening of the conversation is like, “Kiddo, you want to do well, we know it and we know it’s bugging you that you’re not doing as well on the tests as you have in the past or want to do and we hear that you feel like you’re on top of it, but clearly what you’re doing isn’t working.” The next question to ask is, “Do you want help with this?”
And I’ll tell you, Reena, I learned this the hard way. For 20 years, I consulted to a school in my community, a terrific girls school. And over 20 years you come across girls who are, it was a girl’s school who are falling apart academically for any variety of reasons. And you rule out all the things you got to rule out. Is there a learning disorder? Is there an attentional disorder? You take care of all of those things. And then sometimes you get to where like, no, no the kid can do the work, kid’s just not doing the work. Or the interferences are largely within the kid and there are things the kid could control. So one of the things we would do at this school, because it was a resource school and we had a lot of families that could bring a lot of resources to bear, we would create like these wildly supportive structures.
We’d get tutors, we’d get like special study halls, we’d get all these things and we’d wrap them all around the kid and sometimes the kid would just continue to sink and sink and sink.
Reena Ninan:
Wow.
Dr. Lisa Damour:
Yeah.
And sometimes it was like they didn’t want to even go to that school, right? Sometimes they were like trying to leave. And so before orchestrating with the fabulous team at that school, before orchestrating these elaborate support systems for kids, which I came to think of as like sometimes I think of these kids like black holes, like if they did not want the help, they would just suck all of those resources in and it would just disappear. And so sometimes when we were having these kind of like pretty intense conversations with the kids, I would be like, “Okay, so we’ve ruled out this, this and this. This seems to be within your power. Do you want help?”
Reena Ninan:
“Do you want help?”
Dr. Lisa Damour:
“Do you want help?” And it was like a transformational question because sometimes the kids would be like, “No, I don’t want to go to school here.” And then you’re like, “I’m so glad.”
Reena Ninan:
So it comes out. And you know there’s another problem to deal with.
Dr. Lisa Damour:
Yeah. Exactly. And like throwing resources at this kid is a waste. And then what was nice is usually the kid would be like, “Actually I do.” And now you are in a completely different conversation because you are siding with the part of the kid that wants to fix this. Okay. So let’s like lay out the steps because I love this problem. It’s so focal and it’s so fixable, but you got to go at it right.
Reena Ninan:
Okay. But as a parent, I feel so overwhelmed and don’t know where to start. So walk us through it.
Dr. Lisa Damour:
All right.
Reena Ninan:
Great.
Dr. Lisa Damour:
So here we are. So we’re doing step by step. And of course all very easy in theory as I lay it out on the podcast, but like I get it, real life is not always so easy. But step number one is you say you want to do well. Step number two is what you’re doing isn’t working. Step number three, do you want help with this? Let’s presume this is a kid who’s going to say yes because he does seem to care about school. And then step number four is, okay, who does the helping? One of the real challenges by the time a kid is in high school, they don’t usually want their parents acting in the role of tutors or coaches. That is inherently annoying to them. You know what I mean?
Reena Ninan:
Or basketball coach, but yes, go on.
Dr. Lisa Damour:
Exactly. Exactly, exactly. You’re one of my friends.
Reena Ninan:
Used to be able to help and rebound, but that doesn’t work anymore. Yes, exactly basketball.
Dr. Lisa Damour:
And it’s like nails on a chalkboard to them almost.
Reena Ninan:
That’s right. That’s right.
Dr. Lisa Damour:
Even if the advice is great, even if two years ago your kid took it happily, right? In the normal course of development and individuation is what’s going on, kids wish to be separate, to have their however knowledgeable parents in there working with them on something that is very personal and very deep to them is so bothersome. And I actually, I talked about this in Untangled. I cared for a family. I love this so much. So we have the Cleveland Clinic, right? We have a phenomenal, phenomenal medical center here with genius doctors. I cared for a family where the mother was a radiologist at the Cleveland Clinic and her daughter had a sprained something in her ankle and the daughter was like, “You cannot look at it. You cannot.” She refused to let her mother who was like this super … Yeah, because she was a 14 year old and it was like, I can’t have you intruding with your so- called medical knowledge.
Reena Ninan:
Wow. That’s so interesting that even the expert didn’t get to weigh in the expert mom.
Dr. Lisa Damour:
No, not at all. Exactly. So okay, so that’s what we’re working with. I think that families should have this Outsmart Your Brain book. I think that might be a place to start to say, “Look, one option, here’s a really clever book I’ve heard good things about it. If you want to read it and try to see if you can apply what it’s in there, that’s one option.”
Another is, “Is there someone at school who could work with you on study skills? Is there an online course you could take?” I didn’t actually look at this, but Khan Academy has all sorts of really cool courses and I wouldn’t be surprised if Khan Academy or something like it had a ‘how to really study for tests.’ So I think that the job of the adult in this, of the parent is unfortunately probably not to transmit something that they have learned and they’re excited about and they want the kid to know, but to probably broker connecting the kid who has said, “Yes, I want help with good help.” I think that’s the next step.
Reena Ninan:
So it sounds like once you know they do want help to sort of figure out how to get them to rethink studying, great tips in this book that you mentioned, but also looking online to see … One of the things I had suggested for my son who is in ninth grade is something I started doing with my work actually is block scheduling, which is on Mondays I’m focused on this project, on Wednesdays I’m focused on this subject. I don’t want to work on the weekends, but Sunday morning I’ve got to block X amount of time to study and get the reading for this thing done. Does that work with teens and teaching them study methods like that?
Dr. Lisa Damour:
I think, yeah, right and was he receptive? Did he take it in? Did that work for him?
Reena Ninan:
No. There’s no evidence that he took any of this in for all of the reasons you stated earlier in the podcast.
Dr. Lisa Damour:
That’s all right. That’s all right. They don’t always gratify us for doing what we ask, but I think that that’s where … It’s interesting, Reena, and I think clinically, I think so often in my practice, I have been saying to my adolescent patients the same thing their parents have been saying, but coming from me, the kid will hear it, but not from the parent. So I think that that’s again where if you’ve got a super good idea, maybe get the really cool cousin to tell your kid to try it as opposed to being the messenger on those things.
Reena Ninan:
Yeah. No, that’s really great advice because I find sometimes other kids, his peers have been a great influence on helping to learn study groups that he’s sought out himself, which I love. Lisa, to sort of sum it up, what do you want to leave parents with that they need to know?
Dr. Lisa Damour:
That it’s not the same to be good at class as it is to be good at tests. We can talk openly with kids about that and sometimes it comes at them fast. Sometimes it comes up in them fast. They’ve been doing fine and then suddenly the nature of things changes and the kid doesn’t know what’s wrong and we can kind of give them a heads up like, “Oh yeah, studying for tests in high school is a completely different ballgame.” You can learn how to do it.
Reena Ninan:
I wish I’d had this conversation with you a year ago before we entered high school because I’m realizing much like the topics we always discuss, I know I say this often on the podcast, it’s about having that conversation and midterms and finals, it was never a thought in my mind to have that conversation because I trucked through it and I figured it out. So surely they’re going to truck through it and figure it out and it’s painful when-
Dr. Lisa Damour:
It is.
Reena Ninan:
It’s difficult for them.
Dr. Lisa Damour:
It is.
Reena Ninan:
So what do you have first, Lisa, for Parenting to Go?
Dr. Lisa Damour:
I like where we just were around taking any sense that the kids should somehow automatically know this out of the story. I think that if you can say, “Oh yes, it’s very different to do high school tests than middle school tests. And sometimes that’s made clear and sometimes it’s not, but it’s not about you and this is something you can fix.” I think anytime we can take away any sense of blame or shortcoming and also offer this sense of like, “This is workable. You can fix this. It is frustrating, but you’re not stuck or helpless.” I think that can push away a lot of the barriers that are sometimes in place to moving in the right direction.
Reena Ninan:
It’s so important to get those barriers removed because it can just weigh on you as a high school student and you can get so down on yourself so easy when it comes to academics. So love this advice and grateful for it. Thank you, Lisa.
Dr. Lisa Damour:
You bet.
Reena Ninan:
And I just want to say the author, Lisa, talked about Daniel Willingham as well as other episodes that might help your students study and get organized. We’ll have all of those in the show notes, so be sure to check them out.
I’ll see you next week.
Dr. Lisa Damour:
I’ll see you next week.
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