Teach your child how to ask an adult for help …

“Did you tell your teacher?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know.”

That conversation takes place in countless homes. A child comes home form school upset because an assignment made no sense, another student would not leave him alone, she thinks a grade is wrong, or something happened in class that embarrassed her. To the parent, the solution seems obvious: “You need to talk to your teacher.”

The child may agree … only to come home the next day having said nothing.

Adults sometimes interpret that as shyness, avoidance, or a refusal to handle the problem. But consider what the child has actually been asked to do. She has to decide when to approach an adult who is busy and in authority, begin a conversation she may already feel uncomfortable having, explain a situation clearly, ask for something without sounding demanding, listen to the response, and possibly continue the conversation if the answer does not resolve the problem.

Those are learned skills. Simply telling a child to “ask for help” does not teach them. To have these skills, parents need to intentionally teach their children how to ask an adult for help.

Give them words they can actually use
Imagine a ten-year-old named Ethan who tells his father that he does not understand his math homework. His father asks whether he told the teacher that he was confused.

“No. Everybody else understood it.”

That last sentence matters. Ethan’s problem is no longer only fractions. He now has to publicly admit to an adult that he does not understand something he thinks everyone else understands. “Just ask your teacher” may sound easy from the kitchen table, but it may feel very different while sitting in a classroom surrounded by classmates.

His father can make the task manageable by helping him find the words: “Mrs. Davis, I understood what we did at the beginning, but I got lost when we started doing this part. Could you explain that step to me again?”

Now Ethan has something he did not have before. He knows how to begin.

Parents can do this with many situations without scripting every word a child must say. A child who thinks a grade is incorrect might learn to say, “I thought I followed the directions, but I lost points here. Could you help me understand what I did wrong?” A child having trouble with another student might begin, “Could I talk to you privately about something that keeps happening at recess?”

The wording changes with age and circumstances, but the skill underneath it remains important. Children need to learn how to turn “I have a problem” into enough clear information that another person can understand the problem and respond.

That may require a little practice at home. A parent can play the teacher for two minutes while the child practices starting the conversation. This can feel unnecessary to an adult who has spent decades asking questions, disagreeing with people, making appointments, and explaining problems. For a child who has never initiated a difficult conversation with an authority figure, those two minutes can remove much of the uncertainty.

Teach them to choose the moment
Sometimes a child knows what to say but has no idea when to say it.

A teacher walking into class while answering another student’s question and trying to begin a lesson is probably not the best opportunity for a complicated conversation. Neither is calling out, “You graded mine wrong!” from across the room.

Children can learn to notice whether an adult is available and, when necessary, ask for a better time. “Mr. Lee, I need to ask you about something that happened yesterday. When would be a good time to talk to you?” is an extraordinarily useful sentence for a child to know.

This becomes even more important when the subject is personal, embarrassing, or emotionally charged. A child who is upset about something a coach said or who believes a teacher treated her unfairly may be tempted to confront the adult while he is angry. Waiting for an appropriate moment and asking to speak privately gives the conversation a much better chance of going well.

There is also a valuable lesson here that reaches beyond school. Getting help often requires considering the person from whom help is being requested. Children who learn to do that are learning how productive conversations work.

Help them explain rather than accuse
“I told him I needed help.”

“What did you say?”

“I said, ‘You never explain anything!’”

The child did speak up. The problem is that the words probably made it harder for the adult to hear the actual concern.

Children need help learning the difference between describing what happened and making accusations about another person’s motives or character. When emotions are high, “She hates me,” “He always picks on me,” or “My teacher doesn’t care” may genuinely express how the situation feels. Those statements, however, give the adult receiving them very little useful information.

A parent can help the child identify what actually happened. What was said? When did it happen? Has it happened before? What did the child do? What does the child need the adult to know?

Then the conversation becomes more useful: “Three times this week, he has taken my backpack and thrown it behind the bleachers after practice. I told him to stop, but he keeps doing it. I need help getting him to leave my things alone.”

That child has done more than complain, he has given an adult something concrete to respond to.

The same skill helps when the adult is the person with whom the child disagrees. “That’s unfair!” usually ends a conversation more quickly than it advances one. “I thought the rule was that late work lost five points, but mine lost ten. Could you explain why?” gives the adult an opportunity to explain, reconsider, or correct a mistake.

Children do not have to assume that adults are always right in order to speak to them respectfully. They do need to learn that respectful disagreement is far more effective than accusation.

What happens when asking once doesn’t work?
This may be the most important part of the skill because real life does not guarantee a satisfying response simply because a child asked appropriately.

Suppose Maya has told a teacher twice that another student keeps making comments about her body. The teacher tells her to ignore it. The comments continue.

Maya needs to know that asking for help was not a one-time ticket she has now used up.

She can return to the teacher and say, “I tried ignoring it, but it is still happening. Yesterday he said it again in the lunch line. What should I do now?” If the problem continues or the response remains inadequate, she may need to take it to another appropriate adult, including a parent, counselor, coach, administrator, or another trusted person at school.

This is where children can easily become discouraged. An unsuccessful first attempt may convince them that adults will not listen, that the problem is not important enough, or that they should simply endure it. Parents can teach something far more useful: if a legitimate problem remains, asking again or asking someone else can be appropriate.

Of course, some situations should go directly to a parent or another responsible adult. A child who feels unsafe, is being threatened, is experiencing serious bullying or harassment, or is dealing with conduct that frightens or confuses them should never be burdened with handling the situation independently. Learning to ask adults for help includes learning that some problems require adult protection and intervention.

The goal is not to produce a child who never needs a parent, but to raise a child who increasingly knows what to do when a parent is not standing beside them.

One day that child will be a teenager talking with a coach, a college student approaching a professor, or a young employee who needs to tell a supervisor that something has gone wrong. Long before those conversations arrive, there will be a smaller one at school: a child standing outside a classroom door, taking a moment, and then saying, “Could I talk to you about something?”

Knowing how to say what comes next is a skill worth teaching.

Scotty