Children who have struggled with reading often rush through it.

When reading aloud, they push themselves to get through the words as quickly as possible, giving each word equal weight.

Perhaps, after a history of being self-conscious about their slow decoding, they are trying to make up for lost time.

Ironically, they will find themselves stumbling more, not less. That’s because they are ignoring the natural pauses offered by commas and periods. If they slow down and focus on meaning, they will actually read more smoothly. When you see language in phrases instead of words, more emphasis is given to the important words, and the less important words will flow naturally. The overall effect will be “faster.”

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I was working with a thirteen-year-old the other day on a simple rhythm.

When you break it down, you find that any rhythm is just a series of events that occur at specific intervals.

The “one and two and three and four and” occur at precise, even intervals. The X’s represent the places where you would clap or tap or hit a drum or play a note. It’s as simple as that. If you have trouble keeping a steady beat, you can use a device called a metronome to do it for you.

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While the other children around him settled into their lunchtime routine, one eleven-year-old stood agitated in front of the silent microwave. “Ah!” he yelled, and pressed buttons wildly. “Grrr!” He banged on the machine in frustration.

One of the teachers walked over and said gently, “We say, ‘Hey, could I have some help with this?’” She showed the student which buttons to press, and he was on his way.

That this student is unable to intuit how to use that particular microwave is no big deal; however, his inability to ask for help is a major problem. He’s not alone — this is something we see over and over again with children and adults.

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Though there are certainly times when dogged determination can carry the day, it’s also true that discouragement leads to a lot of quitting, even though major motion pictures are not made to tell those stories.

Trying harder doesn’t always yield results.

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It’s really hard to admit when things aren’t working. Often, we would rather have the illusion that we’re making progress than face the brutal truth that we’re spinning our wheels and getting nowhere. Change is hard, being wrong is hard, and acknowledging sunk costs is especially hard. But simply trying harder won’t fix it.

There are ways to reframe the circumstances so that backtracking or review is less painful. The reality is that there are plenty of times when it looks like we’re going backward, but we’re really advancing in our knowledge and ability.

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