Lauren Edmunds uses a powerful metaphor to explore what real remediation should look like when children are struggling.
Rather than repeatedly pulling children out of difficulty, she explains why the focus must be on building the skills, resilience and self-belief that allow them to climb out themselves — and stay out. This episode is a thoughtful reflection on over-helping, learned helplessness, and the role of parents, teachers and therapists in creating strong, capable children who can navigate challenges with confidence.
Transcription: Getting out of the hole
I want to give you a metaphor for how I believe true remediation of a child’s difficulty should look, sound, and be. I was listening to StoryBrand, a podcast based on the book of the same name, and they were talking about this metaphor of the problem and how we get people out of a hole, out of a problem. And they talked about being in a hole.
I thought about children and how, when they are struggling with whatever it is they’re struggling with. So it could be a diagnosis like autism or ADHD or dyslexia or dysgraphia or dyspraxia or non-speaking or anxiety or whatever it is, or generalised, we don’t exactly know what it is, they’re just struggling and they perhaps failed a grade and perhaps looking like they’re going to fail another grade and they’re not keeping up and teachers don’t know what to do about it.
It almost is as if that child is at the bottom of a very long, deep, dark hole. And we want to get this child out of the hole, because nobody wants to be in a hole. Metaphorically, this is a dark, terrible place, a scary place to be.
If we consider that outside of the hole is where thriving happens, where we live a typical life, we move on to be functioning adults, we get a job, we have a family, we have our typical human problems, but it’s functional and productive and full of connection and care and love and whatever else you want for your child.
The Wrong Ways to Get Them Out
But right now you’re thinking, “Oh my gosh, they’re at the bottom of the hole.”
And there are so many, let’s go with the metaphor here, there are different ways to try and get your kid out of the hole. The one way is for you to jump in yourself and land at the bottom, and hopefully don’t hurt yourself on the way down, and you don’t find yourself stuck at the bottom of the hole.
The other way is that that’s too much sympathy, right? That is jellyfishing. That is a parent or a teacher who crumples at the sight of a child’s struggle, and you end up struggling as well, and then you’re not the person who’s going to help them out of the hole. And that’s quite an interesting thing to think about.
The next thing to think about is if your child is at the bottom of the hole, how would you want to get them out? Perhaps you want to give them a ladder, or send down a rescue team to haul him out of the hole.
And that’s a really quick way to get a kid out of a hole, right? Metaphorically, you’re going to go down there, you’re going to harness him up, you’re going to strap him in, you’re going to make sure he’s safe, and you’re going to just winch him out.
Why Quick Fixes Do Not Work
What happens if I extend this metaphor? What happens to a child that’s at the bottom of the hole because he lacks skill? He got into the hole because he lacks the skill to stay out, and he doesn’t have any tools or resources to get out himself.
Then you pull him out, and you place him back on solid ground outside of this deep, dark, scary hole. But you place him there with no skills and no resources. He falls straight back in the hole again.
If we take it outside the metaphor, what happens is that, and this is not true for all children; it is true for some, we give them extra lessons. Perhaps the teacher is just firing to the solution, and there’s no depth of skill being developed, and they slip back into the hole.
Then we, as parents or even as teachers, get frustrated. Why are you still in the hole? Can I get you out again? We pull them out again. And we feel like we’re helping because we’re getting them out of the hole. But we’re not because we’re just yanking them out. We’re not giving them the skills they need to get out of the hole.
I know this is a metaphor; I might be extending it a bit too far. Go with me, because I believe that the philosophy I’ve used in the school that I’ve created is don’t haul the child out of the hole.
Building Skills Inside the Hole
You’ve got to be there. Sometimes you go in the hole with them, and you soothe the,m and you’ve got your own tools to get out of the hole. You need to be strong as the helper. You need to put your oxygen mask on first, but that analogy is overused.
I want to extend that to say you need the tools. You need to have the presence of mind, grounding, regulation, skills, connection, wherewithal, and emotional stability. All of that needs to be in place for you. And not perfect, just developing.
And you need to be using them so that when you get into the hole, you can give connection and soothing, and you can start to say, “Wow, this is a big hole, and let’s look around us. What do we need to get out of here? And how can I help you build the skill?”
The Gym Analogy
And we can go outside of this metaphor to another analogy of going to the gym. I can send my friend to the gym to help me get fit. I’m never going to get fit. I’ve got to go to the gym. I’ve got to do the reps. I’ve got to pick up heavier weights. I’ve got to do more, go more regularly, recover properly, and eat well. I’ve got to do all of those things to get the results I want.
Robustness and Self-Rescue
It’s no different for your child. They have to build that robustness, along with the skills, competencies, abilities, and mindset.
They need to build all these scaffolded pieces so they can get out of the hole, because if they can get out and stay out, they will be able to stay out.
And if they fall back in, they will have the experience, skills, resources, and abilities to get out again.
And that’s what we want.
We want children to be the kind of person who, when they slip up, can get out rather than slip into the hole and put their hand out to ask for help.
That’s a concept I’m interested in as well: the idea of learned helplessness.
Children like that learn. They start to believe that they are helpless when they are overhelped by somebody over and over.
Children need to know that they need to learn and experience that they have the capacity and capability to help themselves.
A Simple Playground Example
And a simple thing is a child trips on a playground. If you have an overreaction, you exacerbate their fear around that and their pain. It’s better to allow them to trip and go, “I see you. Can you get up? Are you okay?” Help them to give them room and space to help themselves.
If they can’t, you might step a bit closer and say, “Can I give you a hand up?” And what you’re doing is you’re regulating their system. You’re showing them that everything is fine and you can help yourself. You can ask me for help, and I can help you, but can you help me help you?
Okay, we’re going maybe a bit far here.
From Struggle to Thriving
But ultimately, what I’m very interested in, from a school perspective and from a parenting perspective, is what happens when a child has fallen into this metaphorical hole: they are failing, they are non-speaking, they’re receiving diagnoses, they’re a handful at home, they’re at the bottom of this hole. How are we going to get them out so that they have the skills?
Because they clearly don’t have the skills. That’s why they’re at the bottom of the hole. Or the skills they have aren’t the right ones. Or they have the skills, but they don’t know how to use them yet. And there are things in the way.
And diagnoses are very important, especially something like dyspraxia or dyslexia, because those are tangible deficits that a child has that prevent them from succeeding, specifically, academically, but also in general life.
Dyspraxia is the child’s inability to turn thought into action. They can’t mobilise their body.
So we need to give them therapies and support and tools and options and ideas and the drive and character, the curiosity and the grit and the enthusiasm within them to try harder because the reality is a child with these deficits has to try harder than anybody else because they have to overcome something first before they start thriving, before they start trying to match up with people who don’t have these kind of diagnoses.
When the System Is Not Enough
What typically happens is the general system is to provide extra lessons, a bit of therapy and keep the child in the system. And that’s great if that’s enough.
But when it’s not enough, we need to consider removing the child from the system for a while and building skills robustly, especially if there are significant deficits.
So the school I have gives space to take a child out of the system without causing too much regression.
So the curriculum we run is sort of split up very strategically to make sure that the foundational academic skills are still being addressed while we address those foundational skills of how to get out of the hole so that when you land on solid ground and academic can really ramp up and pick up, that they have all of those skills, they haven’t fallen behind too much and they can catch up because they are robust, strong characters that can pretty much do anything because they got themselves out of that hole.
We as adults, therapists, teachers, parents, we are the ones that are providing the skills, the encouragement, the motivation, the role modelling so that they can do this, and then they can thrive.
