How to Talk to a Child Who's Struggling

By Laura Lurns · Reviewed by Philip Weaver · Last reviewed 2026-09-28

My child says "I'm stupid." What do I say?

First, do not argue. A quick "No, you're not!" is a small answer to a big feeling. What we see is that it does not stick. Your child has a reason for saying it. Ask what happened.

Our view is that "I'm stupid" is not a report on where your child is. To us, it is a prediction about where they are going. In our view, children act on that prediction.

So answer the prediction with proof. Name one real thing your child did. "You read that whole page." "You fixed that one by yourself." Your child can check a sentence like that against what they remember.

Then say the true thing about the work. "Reading is hard for you right now. We are working on it together." That sentence points somewhere. "I'm stupid" does not.

In the families we work with, we see this often. A child has tried hard for a long time. The same thing kept going wrong. After a while, the child starts to blame themselves.

Why doesn't "You're so smart" help?

A struggling child has proof. The spelling test came back covered in red. When you say "You're so smart," your child weighs your words against the test. What we see is that the test wins.

Praise aimed at the child has been studied. Mueller and Dweck (1998) ran a set of studies with fifth graders. Some children were praised for being smart. Some were praised for their effort. Some got no praise. Then they all got problems they were told they did badly on.

After that, the children praised for being smart stuck with the problems less than the effort-praised children. They enjoyed the problems less. They chose tasks that would keep them looking able.

That was measured in a lab, minutes after a failure the researchers set up. It was one grade. We hold no study of praise from parents at home.

Whether praising effort changes school results is a separate question, and it is disputed. Sisk and colleagues (2018) pooled the studies of mindset programs. They found the effect on school results small on average. It was larger for children who were already struggling. Two reviews in 2023 disagree about how to read this work.

It is still why we praise the effort, not the child.

What should I say instead?

What we do with families comes down to a few habits.

Name what your child did. "You stuck with that when it got hard." "You tried it a second way." Not "You're smart." A sentence about what a child did is one they can check.

Add "yet." "I can't do this" becomes "I can't do this yet." What that draws on is the praise finding above. It is not a finding about school results.

Compare your child to your child. Not to a brother, a sister or a classmate. "You could not do this two weeks ago" is proof. "Your brother could do this" is a verdict.

Say the work is hard, and say they are building it. Not "This is too hard for you." Try "This is hard, and you are building it."

Keep the bar where it is. Make the piece smaller, not the standard lower. What we see is that children notice when the standard drops for them. It reads to them as a verdict.

Can I talk about the hard part out loud?

Yes. Say what is being built, and name the skill. "You are learning to sound out long words" points somewhere. "You're bad at reading" does not.

Our position is that this changes what a child hears about themselves. It also changes, in our view, how they come to talk about themselves. What it does to reading itself, we have not measured.

Be careful with "try harder." Our view is that it is more than feedback on a task. To us, it hands a struggling child a sentence about who they are.

What do I say in the middle of a meltdown?

Say little. Reframing is for a child who is about to start something hard. It is not for a child who is already flooded. Mid-meltdown, "You can handle this" lands as being told their distress is wrong.

What we do is stop the work and stay close. Keep your words short: "This is hard. We can stop." Come back to it when your child is calm.

If it keeps happening over the same task, look at the task. What we see is that the task is usually set at the wrong level. Change the task first, not how your child sees it.

Can I teach my child to talk to themselves differently?

Our position is that self-talk can be taught. In our view, it is part of what a child draws on when something is hard. We hold no study of self-talk in children. What it changes, in our practice, is how a child meets a hard moment.

What we do with families comes down to four steps.

Notice the words. Help your child hear what they say to themselves. "I can't." "I'm dumb." "I'll never get this."

Offer one line to use instead. Keep it short and true. "This is hard, and I am going to keep going." "I can't do this yet." "My job is to be better than I was yesterday."

Practice it when things are calm. Not in the middle of a fight.

Notice when your child uses it. Say you heard it.

Does the way I talk change anything?

Our position is that it is worth doing. Jussim and Harber (2005) reviewed 35 years of work on what teachers expect of students. The effects do occur. They are typically small. They do not build up over time, and they may fade. Jussim and Harber's work is about teachers.

Barger and colleagues (2019) pooled 448 studies of parents' involvement in their children's schooling. Barger found a small but consistent link between parents' involvement and how children do at school. Barger's link held much the same across family income, ethnicity and age. The largest of Barger's small positive links are at home, Grolnick and Pomerantz (2022) report. Grolnick and Pomerantz's examples of involvement at home include talking about school, encouragement, and doing interesting things together. Pomerantz was also an author of Barger's review. Barger's links show that things go together, not that one causes the other. Nor do Barger's links show what a change in how you talk would do.

In Grolnick and Pomerantz's summary of Barger, encouragement is one kind of involvement at home. What we hold of Barger's review says nothing about praise or about which words parents used. Nor does what we hold say whether Barger's encouragement meant telling a child what they are.

We hold no study of whether a change in how a parent talks lasts. So nothing here promises that a change in how you talk will hold on its own. It is something you keep doing.

When the words are telling you something else

The work may be too hard. A child who says "I'm stupid" about reading may be short of a skill, not of confidence. Our position is that this is worth checking first. We hold no measurement of how often it is the reason. Start with the teacher. Say what you are seeing at home, what you have changed, and what happened.

Some things are reasons to ask for another pair of eyes. One is a child who seems unable to feel any satisfaction from anything. Ask when that holds in every setting, over weeks rather than days. Another is a low mood that has stopped lifting. They are reasons to ask, not a category to sort a child into.

Any talk of hurting themselves is a same-day call to your doctor or a crisis line.