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Why Smart Kids Struggle To Study: Unveiling The Mindset Shift For Success
“Mindset is everything, your success begins and ends with mindset” – Unknown.
Developing a succeeding mindset is a major step in achieving success. There are practices, principles and strategies that success obeys. When these are well applied, they make success achievable in any domain, including academics.
Even though intelligence plays a certain role, it is not everything it takes to achieve success, even in academics. There are pupils with moderate IQ levels who achieve outstanding success compared to those with higher IQ levels. Why? Simply because those with moderate IQ levels developed a successful mindset that made them outshine the others.
Research found that 50% of kids with higher IQs are underachieving at school. This confirms the fact that smartness is not the only requirement to succeed. The practices, principles and strategies that command success are all part of the succeeding mindset. And so, in this article, we will unveil the reasons why some smart kids struggle to study, leading to underachievement at school, and we will unveil the succeeding mindset that can bring significant changes.
What is the Succeeding Mindset?
This is a combination of strategies that cause one to succeed. This goes beyond just smartness or natural intelligence. A smart kid who hasn’t developed the habits to succeed and doesn’t apply the strategies and principles of success can still fail! There are many elements that can help a student to build a succeeding mindset, such as resilience, adaptability, consistency, effort, growth mindset, and so on.
This mindset allows students to understand what achieving success really means and exactly how to achieve it. It’s in that journey that they learn, relearn and unlearn certain things, build resilience, embrace change, adopt a growth mindset, and gather all the components that will progressively lead them to their ultimate goal!
In this webinar: Discover the 9 Scholar Success Habits, award-winning educator Temi Kamson spoke extensively about a set of habits that learners can develop in order to achieve success academically and beyond. These habits explained in the webinar are all part of the succeeding mindset that is a major key to triumph in any area of your child’s life.
Over-Reliance on Natural Intelligence
Some very smart kids struggle to study and end up underachieving because they rely too much on their intelligence. They believe that they don’t need to revise in order to succeed. Many intelligent learners fall into the trap of believing that their brain will “magically” remember everything that was taught, or that they will still ace exams even though they don’t spend more time preparing for them. They tend to overestimate their fast-learning abilities.
But the truth is that practice makes perfect! A naturally skilful footballer will not have a very successful career without training! Some subjects get more challenging and require revision and extra study time in order to be grasped correctly. This over-reliance makes it challenging for young people to develop study habits that will help them achieve and maintain a good academic performance. And that’s where the problem begins! As a parent, you need to let your child know that, despite their natural intelligence or high IQ, despite achieving higher grades the previous year or term, they still need to study and revise in order to maintain that top performance.
Regardless of how smart a child is, research shows that the human brain forgets about 50% of information within an hour, about 70% within a day and 90% within a week. That’s why it is important for your child to regularly revise and have personal study time.
Lack of Effective Study Strategies
Developing effective study strategies can make your child enjoy their personal study and revision time. The lack of them can cause a decline in academic performance, despite the smartness of the pupil. Many bright kids have not developed effective study strategies. They usually have difficulties taking notes, managing their time, or rushing through their study sessions. Complex subjects demand structured study techniques. Without developing effective study techniques, students might struggle to achieve academically, even though they are smart.
Additionally, use different methods to make study sessions less “boring”. In a world full of distractions, the attention span of young people is greatly reduced. You need to help your child make the study sessions interesting and enticing so that they stay away from distractions that fight for their attention. Help your teen understand how important it is for them to study by linking it with their passion – when passion is involved, efforts become voluntary!
Create an environment that will facilitate studying for them, away from distractions. Make their study space comfortable enough and have the necessary learning materials at their reach and disposal. Decluster study sessions. Instead of long and strenuous study sessions, you can include regular breaks to help them refresh and rest. This article on our website also provides some tips to improve your child’s attention span and help them study better.
Procrastination, Lack of Motivation and Discipline
Most of the time, smart young people count on last-minute cramming because they have seen it work for them in the past, due to their strong memory. So, they tend to postpone study time or not take it seriously. Procrastination is a killer of success, and lack of self-discipline can affect their long-term academic performance despite their smartness.
To solve this, you can help them structure their days, have a daily, weekly, monthly or termly calendar with study times well scheduled. Encourage them to set alarms 5 or 10 minutes before their study times, to remind them and get them prepared to study. And when possible, supervise them during their study time. You don’t have to completely stop your activities in order to supervise them. You can create your small corner in their study room, where you can sit and read your newspaper or book while they are studying. And occasionally just check on them and ask them random questions on the subject they are studying, just to make sure they are engaged in it.
The goal here is to boost them. Your presence in their study room during their study time can make a difference. And remember, regularly encourage them, not obliging or commanding them. Encouragement will ignite passion, while obligation will make them see it as a burden. You need to influence them to like studying by constantly reminding them the importance and benefits of it, and motivating them when they need an external booster.
Have You Considered Co-Study Sessions?
Association greatly impacts behaviour, and behaviour greatly influences results. Is your child struggling to concentrate? Having low motivation to study? Not disciplined enough during study time? Or does it have no accountability partner for their studies? Have you considered enrolling your child in co-study sessions? Where your child can study collaboratively with like-minded peers – Plus, it doesn’t have to be in person. It can also happen virtually! This can bring a huge shift in your child’s academic journey!
A co-study session has multiple benefits, including:
- It provides an adequate association for your child to study with like-minded peers
- Reduces distractions
- Boosts your child’s motivation to study, resulting in improved grades
- Reduces loneliness, anxiety, depression and study pressures
- Promotes study discipline and kills procrastination
- Saves you the time and energy to constantly supervise your child.
Additionally, research proves that collaborative study sessions increase the academic performance of students and improve their social skills. This is a very effective strategy to instil the love of learning into your child and motivate them to study during exam preparation or to achieve certain academic goals.
At GT Scholars, we offer virtual co-study sessions for young people aged 11 to 18, supervised by our scholars’ success team, to offer an adequate virtual learning association and motivate your child to study. In addition to the multiple advantages that our co-study sessions offer, we have also included amazing features such as:
- Tiered points – your child can earn points for attending sessions and even win prizes.
- Being part of a co-study house and earning points together – this nurtures the sense of community, helps your child develop social skills and find positive connections.
- Silent co-study club, which is ideal for independent learners.
If you would like to get more information about the GT Scholars Co-study club, you can register your interest here.
Final Thoughts
Smart kids don’t struggle because they lack intelligence; they simply struggle because they haven’t developed the right mindset and strategies to channel their smartness into success. As you guide your child to develop the succeeding mindset, avoid over-reliance on their intelligence, develop effective study strategies, fight procrastination and develop study discipline through collaborative study; the shift will be imminent!
Helping young people to reach their full potential and achieve their academic and professional goals is our main responsibility at GT Scholars. And we have designed award-winning programmes that can greatly benefit your child! You can register your interest to speak to one of our academic coaches or scholar success team members.
GT Scholars is an award-winning education company and social enterprise. We run high-impact tutoring, mentoring & enrichment programmes for young people aged 11-18. If you’d like to give your child the support, skills and strategies needed to achieve their academic and career aspirations, you're in the right place!
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