Sometimes, what helps us move past our anxiety isn’t that the problem has disappeared, but that we’ve finally understood where the real problem lies.

By Jane Sonnenschein · September 11, 2026

For a while after my daughter started fourth grade, I was genuinely worried.

Just two months earlier, I had hardly considered the possibility that her grades might prevent her from getting into a Gymnasium, the academic secondary school in Germany that generally prepares students for university.

In second grade and the first half of third grade, she had always done quite well in mathematics, frequently receiving grades of 1 or 2 on the German grading scale, where 1 is the highest and 6 is the lowest. Her German reading and speaking skills also seemed fine.

But in the second half of third grade, her results suddenly began to decline. She started getting 3s in mathematics, and even received a 4 once. Then, on her first mathematics test at the beginning of fourth grade, she got another 3.

At the same time, when we took a closer look at her German writing, we discovered quite a few problems we had previously overlooked.

She was inconsistent with capitalizing nouns, sometimes mixed up punctuation and verb tenses, and although she could express herself perfectly well when speaking, all sorts of small mistakes appeared as soon as she had to write a short summary on her own.

None of these mistakes seemed particularly serious on its own. But when they all appeared together in a short piece of writing, they created an unsettling feeling for us as parents: Why does it suddenly seem as though there are problems everywhere?

And to make matters worse, the school itself was going through a period of instability.

My daughter’s class teacher had originally taught several of the class’s main subjects. But this term, the education authorities assigned her to another school for two days a week, meaning she was only at her usual school for three of the five school days.

Some lessons were taken over by other teachers, some by temporary teachers, and some of those teachers barely knew the children. Even though the term had already been underway for a while, the class still didn’t have a complete, stable timetable.

For a family with a child at this important stage of the German school system, it was difficult not to feel anxious.

We complained about the shortage of teachers and the lack of continuity in teaching. We wondered why, of all times, the teacher who knew the children best had to be away two days a week during such an important school year.

At the parents’ meeting, other families were also discussing whether we should submit a joint complaint to the education authorities.

And these concerns were not unreasonable.

But over the past couple of days, I suddenly realized something: if I kept focusing all my attention on these external problems, I wouldn’t actually be solving my daughter’s most important difficulty.

I cannot decide whether the school has enough teachers. I cannot decide whether a teacher gets transferred elsewhere. Nor can I change the language abilities of every child in her class.

Even if we put a great deal of effort into protesting, how much the external situation eventually improves is not entirely within our control.

What gradually helped me move away from the anxiety of the previous few days—the constant fear that we might already be running out of time—was finally beginning to see the main problem more clearly.

When I first read about internal and external causes, and principal and secondary contradictions, in the Selected Works of Mao Zedong, I thought of them as a rather broad way of analyzing the world.

But applying that way of thinking to my own child’s education, I suddenly realized how practical it could be.

External conditions certainly matter.

Having a consistent teacher, a clear timetable, a suitable classroom environment, and enough practice at home can all influence how well a child learns. A good teacher can help a child progress faster, while a disorganized learning environment can genuinely make things more difficult.

But these are still external conditions.

If a child has not developed the ability to manage her own learning, even the best school and the best teachers cannot always be there to tell her what to study today, what to review before an exam, which areas she hasn’t mastered, and how to improve them.

On the other hand, if a child gradually develops her own ways of learning, she will have at least some ability to adjust when the external conditions are less than ideal.

I began to feel that this was the internal factor we really needed to focus on.

For quite some time, we had described my daughter’s problems as carelessness.

She might read the wrong row on a price list, make a mistake in a subtraction problem she knew how to solve, forget to capitalize a German noun, or get stuck on one question during a test and run out of time for the remaining questions.

So we kept telling her, “You really need to be more careful next time.”

Only gradually did I realize that the problem wasn’t necessarily that she didn’t want to be careful. She simply didn’t know what being careful actually involved.

If she kept looking at the wrong row of a price list, she could use a pencil to mark the correct line.

If a question mentioned two products, she could first write down the products and their prices separately.

If she kept getting confused during subtraction, she could write out the steps on scrap paper and then check her answer using another method.

If she regularly made capitalization mistakes in German, she could do a separate check for nouns after finishing her writing.

Being careful isn’t simply a personality trait. It involves a set of specific actions that can be practiced.

Later, we also kept thinking she wasn’t working hard enough.

She said herself that she wanted to go to a Gymnasium, yet she still loved making crafts, drawing, and taking part in class activities. When we asked her to review her schoolwork independently, she often had no idea what to do.

In the past, we would easily have concluded that she simply wasn’t willing to put in the time.

Until one day, I suddenly realized that she might not know what working hard was supposed to look like.

She didn’t know how to identify her weaker areas, what to look at first when a marked test came back, or whether reviewing meant rereading her textbook, doing the questions again, or organizing the mistakes she had made.

She had even approached a classmate who got very good grades and asked whether they could study together.

At the time, I found that rather strange. If you want to study, why do you need someone else to do it with you?

Later, I understood that she might have been instinctively looking for some kind of structure.

Perhaps that classmate knew what to do before a test, while my daughter didn’t.

That is something very different from laziness.

Yesterday’s parents’ meeting gave me another perspective on her situation.

Her teachers actually had a very positive overall impression of her. She reads very well, has no difficulty expressing herself orally, is good with her hands, and does well in many areas. Her teacher also clearly considers her an intelligent child.

But the teacher mentioned one particularly interesting characteristic.

Sometimes, a question is actually very simple. Other children see a direct route from A to B, but my daughter may wander off in another direction, follow a different line of thought, and eventually find her way back.

The moment I heard that description, it felt incredibly familiar.

Because I am exactly the same.

Someone asks me a question that only needs a straightforward answer, but my mind automatically starts thinking about the background, the causes, the possible explanations, and all the other things connected to it.

Instead of simply going from A to B, I go from A to B, then on to C, before finally returning to the original question.

That way of thinking can be an advantage in writing, analysis, and open-ended discussions. But it isn’t necessarily helpful in standardized tests.

Sometimes, an exam requires you to narrow your thinking.

You need to answer what the question is actually asking and work with the information it provides, rather than adding every possibility that might exist in real life.

We once worked through a mathematics question about a swimming pool, and it was a perfect example.

The question asked her to calculate the cost of ice cream and water using a price list.

But she noticed that the list also included admission tickets for children. And because she knew from experience that you have to buy a ticket before going swimming, she included the admission fee in her calculation.

Her reasoning wasn’t random at all. In fact, from a real-life perspective, it made perfect sense.

But one of the skills required in standardized tests is knowing how to limit your answer to the question being asked.

Can I first identify exactly what the question wants, instead of including every other condition that comes to mind?

I suddenly realized that what my daughter needed wasn’t to think less.

She needed to learn when to explore different possibilities and when to bring her thinking back to the question in front of her.

Once I put all these observations together, I no longer felt as though there were problems everywhere.

Previously, all I could see were her grade of 3 in mathematics, the mistakes in her German writing, the teacher being assigned to another school, the lack of homework, and her difficulty reviewing independently.

Everything was tangled together like a growing web of problems, and I had no idea where to begin.

Now, I was gradually beginning to see one underlying issue:

She had not yet developed her own system for learning.

She is intelligent and understands things quite well, but she hasn’t fully learned how to make use of those strengths.

She doesn’t yet know how to identify what she finds difficult, sort her mistakes into different types, choose a reliable method, or tell the difference between truly mastering something and simply understanding an explanation.

She also hasn’t learned how to manage her attention during exams, temporarily set aside ideas that take her in different directions, and focus first on what the question actually requires.

In the early years of primary school, these abilities may not seem particularly important.

The material is relatively simple. Children who understand things quickly, have good memories, and follow what is happening in class can often get good grades without much difficulty.

As a result, both parents and children may develop a mistaken impression: the child already knows how to learn.

But as children move into higher grades, the material becomes more complicated and the tasks demand more of them. Being intelligent is no longer enough.

What a child really needs is to gradually learn to ask herself:

What do I already know how to do?

What have I understood but still need to practice?

What do I genuinely not understand?

Why did I get this question wrong?

What should I do differently next time?

Before an exam, where should I spend my time?

These questions may seem much more complicated than a single mathematics problem, but they may also be far more important.

Because what she has to learn in the future will only become more difficult.

Even if she gets into a Gymnasium this time, her parents cannot sit beside her forever, telling her which chapter to review today and which practice paper to complete tomorrow.

As children grow older, parents gradually have to step back.

In the end, what will stay with her is her own ability to learn.

Once I began to see things this way, I even started to wonder whether this drop in grades might not be entirely a bad thing.

There is an old Chinese saying: Sài wēng shī mǎ, yān zhī fēi fú¹.

If she had continued relying on her quick understanding and easily receiving grades of 1 and 2, we might never have noticed that she hadn’t really learned how to learn.

Perhaps she would have continued in the same way into fifth or sixth grade, or even longer, only encountering a serious setback when the material became too complicated for intelligence alone to carry her through.

But right now, she is only nine years old.

She is still willing to listen to her parents and sit down with us to go through her test papers.

The problems may have appeared suddenly, but it is certainly not too late to work on them.

So I no longer want to put all my energy into worrying about whether we can bring her grades back up within the next two months.

Grades do matter. The transition after fourth grade is a real turning point in the school system, and we will do our best to reduce avoidable mistakes and help her catch up on anything she hasn’t mastered.

But something matters more than turning the next grade of 3 into a 2: helping her begin to build a learning method of her own.

At first, we can sit beside her and ask, “Why did you get this question wrong?”

Gradually, she can begin asking herself, “What kind of mistake do I keep making in questions like this?”

And eventually, she may be able to judge for herself:

“I already understand this, so I don’t need to keep practicing it.”

“I partly understand this, but I still need more practice.”

“I really don’t understand this at all, so I need to find another explanation or ask someone to help me.”

Once a child has genuinely developed these abilities, the quality of her teachers and the resources available at school will still matter, of course.

But those external factors will no longer determine everything about how she learns.

She will begin to have something that truly belongs to her:

When I encounter something I don’t know how to do, I know how to work towards understanding it, one step at a time.

More and more, I feel that this is what education should ultimately leave a child with.

Knowledge will change. Schools will change. Teachers will come and go. Some of the jobs that will exist in the future may not even have been invented yet.

But if a person knows how to recognize a problem, look for possible methods, get feedback, correct mistakes, and try again, she won’t be completely helpless when she enters an unfamiliar field.

Perhaps this is what my daughter’s sudden drop in grades has really brought us.

It has taken me from my initial anxiety—Why does everything suddenly seem to be going wrong? Are we already running out of time?—to a very different place.

The problems are still there.

The shortage of teachers hasn’t disappeared. My daughter’s mathematics grades haven’t suddenly returned to 1, and her German writing still needs a great deal of practice.

But I no longer feel lost.

Because once the main problem becomes clearer, you begin to understand where your energy is best spent.

We will continue trying to improve the external conditions where we can, and we will certainly appreciate whatever help her teachers can provide.

But what can truly make a lasting difference for a child is the ability to learn that she gradually develops for herself.

Learning how to learn also means learning how to keep moving forward, even when the environment around you is far from perfect.

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Notes

¹ Sài wēng shī mǎ, yān zhī fēi fú (塞翁失马，焉知非福) — A traditional Chinese saying meaning, roughly, “Who knows whether a misfortune might turn out to be a blessing?” It comes from an old story about a man who loses his horse. What initially appears to be bad luck later brings an unexpected benefit, while events that seem fortunate can also lead to trouble. The saying reflects the idea that good and bad outcomes are not always immediately clear, and that an apparent setback may eventually lead to something valuable.

This essay is also available in other languages:

Chinese version: 四年级成绩突然下滑后，我终于看清了真正需要解决的“主要矛盾”

German version: Als die Noten meiner Tochter in der vierten Klasse plötzlich schlechter wurden, erkannte ich endlich das eigentliche Problem