Child psychologist to speak on underachieving

Author Sylvia Rimm to speak on underachievement in children next month at Lake Erie College.

A renowned child psychologist, New York Times-bestselling author and director of Cleveland’s Family Achievement Clinic will speak at Lake Erie College in Painesville on April 5.

Sylvia Rimm will present “Underachievement Syndrome: An Educational Epidemic.”

The event will begin at 6:30 p.m. in Dickinson Lecture Hall, located in the Austin Hall of Science.

Rimm speaks and publishes internationally about guiding children toward achievement, according to the news release.

Her lecture will describe what she considers an epidemic of children working and learning below their abilities, offering guidelines for teachers and parents in identifying, preventing and treating underachievement syndrome.

There is no gene for underachievement, Rimm said in her column, “Sylvia Rimm on Raising Kids.”

“Instead, underachieving children seem not to have learned the process of achievement — in fact, they have learned to underachieve,” she said. “Underachievers are often disorganized, dawdle, forget homework, lose assignments, and misplace books. They daydream, don’t listen, look out the window, or talk too much to other children. They have poor study skills—or none at all. They have innumerable excuses and defenses.”

In that issue, she also gives teachers and parents strategies for reversing underachievement.

Rimm has been a contributing expert to NBC’s “Today” show, host of the public radio show “Family Talk” and the author of a nationally syndicated parenting column, “Sylvia Rimm on Raising Kids.” She is also a clinical professor of psychiatry and pediatrics at the Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine and a longtime member of the National Association for Gifted Children Board of Directors.

The lecture is free and open to the public. However, registration in advance is required and may be completed at https:// www.eventbrite.com/e/underachievement-syndromean-educational-epidemictickets-42543381399

College credit is available for professional development.

“...underachieving children seem not to have learned the process of achievement — in fact, they have learned to underachieve. Underachievers are often disorganized, dawdle, forget homework, lose assignments, and misplace books. They daydream, don’t listen, look out the window, or talk too much to other children. They have poor study skills—or none at all. They have innumerable excuses and defenses.” — Sylvia Rimm, child psychologist, author and director of Cleveland Family Achievement Clinic

Rimm