I still remember sitting at the kitchen table, staring at my geometry homework, feeling completely lost. Not because I didn’t care. Not because I wasn’t trying. But because none of it made sense.
It wasn’t the angles that got me. It was the proofs.
The triangles looked the same. Why did I have to prove it? Why did I need a theorem, a postulate, or some other rule I didn’t understand to tell me what my eyes already knew? And even if I could get through the triangle proofs, what was I supposed to do when they started throwing in other shapes, more steps, and rules I didn’t even know how to apply?
It felt impossible. So I did what our teachers always told us to do—I asked for help.
My dad, who never struggled with math a day in his life, sat down beside me. At first, he tried to explain, but the more I didn’t get it, the more frustrated he became. His voice grew sharper, his patience thinner. Suddenly, the lesson on geometry turned into a lecture—not about proofs, but about effort.
“You just need to pay attention.”
“I already showed you this.”
“You have to try harder.”
I had been trying. That was the problem. I had tried everything I knew, and it still wasn’t clicking. Instead of feeling supported, I felt small. The message I took away wasn’t keep going—it was you should have figured this out by now.
It wasn’t that my dad didn’t want to help. He just didn’t know how to help someone struggling with something that had always been easy for him.
That’s something I see reflected in so many parents, teachers, and even students themselves.
When Understanding Comes Easily, Teaching Is Harder
This scenario exemplifies what psychologists refer to as the Curse of Knowledge—a cognitive bias where individuals who are highly skilled or knowledgeable in a subject struggle to teach or explain it to someone with less experience. They have difficulty putting themselves in the mindset of a beginner because they unconsciously assume that others have the same background knowledge and intuitions that they do.
When that assumption is wrong, frustration creeps in.
For parents who excelled in a subject, there’s the frustration of not understanding why their child doesn’t “just get it.” For parents who struggled, there’s the guilt of feeling unequipped to help—or worse, the fear that they’ve passed on their own challenges.
When frustration takes over, what starts as a tutoring session turns into something much heavier—a conversation about ability, intelligence, or personal shortcomings.
It happens in classrooms, too.
The Teacher’s Struggle: When Every Strategy Fails
I think about the teachers who sincerely want to help their students, who present information in all the ways they know, only to watch their students still struggle.
At a certain point, it’s easy to assume the problem isn’t the lesson—it’s the student. Maybe they aren’t paying attention. Maybe they aren’t putting in the effort. Maybe they didn’t do their homework, and that’s why they’re lost.
It’s always easier to look outward—to blame a lack of focus, discipline, or effort—than to sit in the discomfort of I don’t know why they don’t get this.
Here’s the thing: Most students don’t choose to struggle. No one wants to sit in frustration, convinced they’ll never understand. Most of the time, when a student shuts down, it’s not because they don’t care. It’s because they care so much that failure feels like confirmation of their worst fear: I can’t do this.
How We Can Help Struggling Students
So what do we do when a child is struggling, and we don’t know how to reach them?
Take a breath. Frustration is natural, but before it turns into blame or impatience, pause. Recognize that learning is messy and that struggling doesn’t mean failing.
Validate the struggle. Instead of “You just need to pay better attention,” try “This is tough, isn’t it? Let’s work through it together.”
Reframe success. Success doesn’t mean instant understanding—it means staying engaged, trying again, and not giving up. A student’s struggle today is not their limit forever.
I never did become great at geometry, but I did get through it. What I remember most from that time isn’t the formulas or the theorems—it’s how it felt to struggle. I remember the frustration, the tension, and the overwhelming feeling that maybe I just wasn’t built for this.
That’s why, when a student sits in front of me with that same look of frustration, I don’t tell them they should get it by now.
I tell them that struggling doesn’t mean they’re failing. That understanding takes time. And that just because it’s hard today doesn’t mean it will always be.
Sometimes, the difference between a student who keeps trying and one who gives up comes down to what they hear in their hardest moments.
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