When Learned Helplessness Looks Like Stubbornness
Learned helplessness is a psychological concept that describes a condition in which a person has feelings of powerlessness and inability to succeed. Sometimes this condition is brought on by a traumatic experience. Also, this condition can be brought on by learned behaviors from those around them.
If you have had a high school or college introductory psychology course, you have probably heard of this concept.
If you work with children and teens, you probably see this concept in real life on an almost daily basis. But it is sometimes not easy to identify that learned helplessness, instead of stubbornness, is what may be driving the emotions and feelings of the child.
The Christmas Tree Lesson
Many times, learned helplessness may look like simple refusal to do something, when actually the child is simply stumped as to what to do next. Those of us working with that child think that we have assigned a simple task. But the child that feels helpless. They think that they can’t accomplish the task even though it may be one that should be easy.
It is easy to mistake learned helplessness for stubbornness or simple refusal to engage in a task. I made that mistake once when I asked a high school student to help with setting up an artificial Christmas tree. We were both working for an organization that raised money for a charity by hosting a Christmas village and Santa Land walk-through. This young man and I both showed up at the same time, and he asked what he could do. I told him that we needed the artificial Christmas trees to be put up and asked him to start with that. When I came back to check on his progress about 30 minutes later, he had done absolutely nothing. I was a little bit annoyed and inquired as to what he had been doing. He said that he had kept trying to put this thing together, but he just couldn’t figure it out.
My first reaction was to think that this young man was just being lazy. But as I worked with him, I realized that he was truly bewildered about the process. It was something he had never done before. Even though he was a brilliant young man, the concept of putting the wires in a particular spot had just never been explained to him. He had no background for the skills that it took to put a Christmas tree together.
I finally jumped in, worked with him a few minutes, and explained how the process should look. Once he got the concept, he finished the project quickly and spent the rest of the day putting up other Christmas trees. It wasn’t that he was lazy or that he was not smart enough to put up a Christmas tree. It was that this was a habit he had learned. He was used to letting other folks do the task while he sat back and analyzed what he should do.
In this case, there was no example for him to follow, so he just stood there feeling helpless until someone came along and gave him a bit of instruction. That was my fault. I assumed that because he was a very, very smart young man, he could do it easily. As it turned out, while he was great at taking tests and writing papers, he had never had the opportunity to work this way with his hands.
Fears Children Learn from Adults
Another way that we may see learned helplessness in our children is their fear of something that they have never really experienced. For instance, if your grandmother constantly told you as a child to stay away from dogs, “Don’t touch that dog!” “Don’t go around that dog!” “He’ll bite you!” “That dog is mean!” and “Dogs will hurt you!”, you could develop a fear of dogs without ever having really been around a dog. You’ve been told that something is dangerous. As children, we believe the adults around us, so we develop that fear just by taking the word of the adults we trust.
If we are told enough times that something is bad or harmful, we can be conditioned to fear that thing.
What Tarantulas Taught My College Students
Movies and social media can also have an impact on our feelings of learned helplessness.
When I discussed this concept with my college students, I would ask them, “What do you think you would do if I were to bring a very large black tarantula into our classroom and throw it out toward the middle of the room?” Typically, most of the students would say they would run out of the room as quickly as possible. Also, there were usually one or two students who said that they would not be afraid.
As we further discussed this topic, we would discuss which of the students had experience with tarantulas, and which did not. It typically became very clear that those students who had previously had experience with tarantulas in a positive setting had much less fear than students who had no experience or a negative experience.
Interestingly, it really didn’t matter whether the experience with the tarantula had been an actual physical experience or experience from watching a movie. I have had this conversation with multiple classes of students down through the years. It has become clear that the majority of the students actually had no experience with an actual tarantula but learned their fear through watching a movie or being told by someone that the tarantulas were dangerous and could kill you.
The majority of the time that I have had this discussion with students, the old movie Arachnophobia has come up. Many of them learned their fear from watching that movie. This fact is rather interesting to me, since I still have memories of that movie and make a point to avoid any movie or TV show with creatures having eight hairy legs.
Looking Past the Behavior
As we work with our children, it is very important to be cognizant of factors that may be impacting that child’s thoughts and fears. Sometimes you have to pay attention to be aware of the learned helplessness that a child may be feeling. Sometimes we may mistake a child’s behavior for stubbornness or rudeness when, in fact, the child has a learned helplessness issue that they just don’t know how to deal with. It may take some understanding, a willingness to talk, and some patience to discover the best way to help a child with his or her learned helplessness fears.
Fight, Flight, or Freeze
Another factor to consider when trying to help your child may be his or her natural reaction of fight, flight or freeze when faced with a scary or intimidating circumstance. Most of us have heard of the fight, flight or freeze reaction. Basically, when encountering a scary situation, most of us will go into fight, flight or freeze mode. It is a natural reaction for all of us.
Fight is just what it says. We may attempt to fight our way out of the situation that is scaring us. Or we may run. That is the flight reaction. The child can simply think of nothing but getting away from the situation that is frightening to him or her. The freeze reaction is simply that. The child may absolutely quit trying to do anything. That is a normal biological reaction that some kids have to stress or perceived danger. However, we as adults tend to view this reaction as being disobedient or disrespectful.
Why Kids Need Room to Fail
One of the best ways to make sure the kids do not fall victim to learned helplessness is to allow them to fail. That sounds quite contradictory, but it is important to allow kids to try things for themselves, knowing that they will not always be successful. That experience will teach them how to redo things, revisit, study a little harder, etc., as they learn how to solve problems for themselves. If we as adults jump in and solve everything for them, then they are doomed to feeling helpless about their ability to deal with problems.
Helping Children Believe They Can
Whether a child stalls on a new task, fears something he has never experienced, or freezes when a situation feels scary, the behavior that looks like stubbornness often has learned helplessness underneath it. That young man with the Christmas tree did not need me to put the tree up for him. He needed a few minutes of instruction and the chance to do the rest himself. Many children who seem stubborn or unwilling are in the same spot. When we slow down, ask what they know, and give them just enough help to get started, we often find a capable child who simply did not know where to begin. Then we can step back and let them try, even if they get it wrong a time or two. That is how children learn that they can handle hard things on their own.
Want to go deeper? Our online course, Encouraging Resilience, covers how adults can help children build the confidence to try, fail, and try again on their own.
