What "I Don't Know" Actually Means (And How to Help Your Child Get Unstuck)

Last week, we asked a student to describe a picture. She stared at it for twelve seconds—we counted—then said: "I don't know."

She's bilingual. Bright. Gets good grades in math when the problems are pure numbers. But wrap that same math in English sentences, and she freezes.

Her mom thought it was a focus problem. Her school suggested more practice. But after working with hundreds of students like her, we've learned something that changes everything: "I don't know" almost never means "I don't know." It means something else entirely.

What "I Don't Know" Actually Means

When your child says "I don't know," your brain probably jumps to one of these conclusions: they weren't paying attention, they didn't study, they're being lazy, or they don't care.

But here's what's actually happening in most cases: the information is there. They just can't access it.

We know this because we test for it. In a recent diagnostic, we asked a bilingual fourth-grader to compare a whale and a dolphin. She immediately said: "The whale is way bigger." No hesitation. She understands comparison.

Then we asked: "What does 'compare' mean in math?"

She typed into the chat: "IDK."

Same concept. Same child. But when the question came through academic language, the pathway closed.

Psychologists call this retrieval failure—the difference between having information stored and being able to pull it up on demand. It's why you can forget someone's name mid-sentence, then remember it perfectly in the shower three hours later. The memory didn't disappear. The pathway to it was temporarily blocked.

For children, this happens constantly. Their brains are still developing the executive function skills that manage information retrieval—what researchers at Harvard call the brain's "air traffic control system." When that system gets overloaded, it doesn't slow down gracefully. It freezes.

Why Pressure Makes It Worse

Here's the frustrating part: the more pressure you apply, the worse retrieval failure gets.

When a child feels put on the spot, stress hormones flood the prefrontal cortex—the exact part of the brain responsible for working memory and retrieval. It's like trying to load a webpage while someone keeps clicking refresh. The system can't complete the task because it keeps getting interrupted by the demand to complete the task.

We see this constantly with bilingual children. They're managing two language systems simultaneously, which actually strengthens their executive function over time. But in the moment of retrieval, they have more traffic to manage. Add time pressure or parental frustration, and the whole system locks up.

The child isn't choosing to freeze. Their brain is protecting itself from overload by shutting down the retrieval process entirely. "I don't know" is the emergency brake.

What We See in Real Students

One of our students calculates flawlessly when the problem is 247 + 386. Hand her the same problem as "Maria had 247 stickers and got 386 more"—she freezes.

Her math knowledge didn't evaporate. But the language wrapping around the numbers created extra cognitive load. Her brain had to hold the story, extract the numbers, identify the operation, AND perform the calculation. Too many tasks competing for limited working memory.

When we asked what she was thinking, she said: "I don't know where to start."

That phrase—"I don't know where to start"—is the honest version of "I don't know." It tells you exactly what's wrong: not missing knowledge, but missing an entry point.

The Anchoring Technique

Here's what we teach instead of "try harder" or "think about it more":

Find one thing. Say it out loud. Start there.

We call this anchoring. Instead of asking your child to produce the whole answer, ask them to identify one single thing they notice. Anything. It doesn't have to be the "right" starting point.

Why does this work? Three reasons:

First, it removes the performance pressure. "One thing you notice" has no wrong answer. The emergency brake disengages.

Second, it creates a retrieval cue. Memory research shows that accessing any related information makes connected information easier to retrieve. One anchor pulls up the chain.

Third, it externalizes thinking. When your child says something out loud, they're not just communicating—they're offloading information from working memory. This frees up cognitive resources for the next step.

What This Looks Like in Practice

Back to the sticker problem. Instead of asking "what's the answer?" we asked: "What's one thing you know for sure about this problem?"

She said: "There are stickers."

That's it. That's the anchor. From there:

"Good. How many stickers does Maria start with?"

"247."

"And what happens next?"

"She gets more."

"How many more?"

"386."

"So if she had 247 and got 386 more, what do we need to figure out?"

"How many she has now... so I add them."

Same problem. Same child. Different entry point. The knowledge was always there—she just needed a way in.

When Anchoring Isn't Enough

We want to be honest: anchoring works for retrieval failure, but not every "I don't know" is retrieval failure.

Sometimes children genuinely haven't learned the material. Anchoring won't create knowledge that doesn't exist—it can only unlock knowledge that's stuck.

How do you tell the difference? If anchoring consistently produces nothing—not even fragments, not even wrong guesses—the information may not be stored at all. That's a different problem requiring different intervention: teaching, not retrieval support.

We also see children who have deeper processing differences that make retrieval chronically difficult. For these students, anchoring helps, but they may also benefit from working with specialists who focus on executive function development. We coordinate with those specialists when needed—the goal is helping the child, not claiming expertise we don't have.

What You Can Do Tonight

The next time your child says "I don't know," try this:

First, pause. Don't repeat the question louder or add pressure. The freeze is already happening—more pressure makes it worse.

Second, ask for one thing: "What's one part of this you do know?" or "What's one thing you notice?" Accept any answer. Wrong answers are fine. Fragments are fine. The goal is movement, not accuracy.

Third, build from the anchor. Once they've said something—anything—use it as a stepping stone. "Okay, you noticed X. What does that make you think about?"

Fourth, notice patterns. Does your child freeze more with word problems than pure calculation? More with timed work than untimed? More in certain subjects? These patterns reveal where cognitive load is highest.

The Bigger Picture

That same fourth-grader? When she saw "how many MORE does Jake have," she wanted to add. She'd learned "more" as a cue for addition — but "how many more" actually requires subtraction. The keyword she'd been taught was pointing her in the wrong direction.

We've worked with hundreds of students who came to us labeled as "unfocused," "unmotivated," or "not trying hard enough." In most cases, the problem wasn't effort. It was entry point.

These children knew more than they could show. Their "I don't know" was real—not as a statement about their knowledge, but as a statement about their access to it. The information was there, locked behind a retrieval system that had temporarily shut down.

Anchoring doesn't make children smarter. It helps them access the intelligence they already have. That distinction matters to us—we're not in the business of motivation or discipline, and we don't think most children need more of either. What they need is a better understanding of how their own thinking works, and simple techniques to get unstuck when their brain freezes.

That's what we teach. Not just English, not just test prep, but the cognitive moves that turn "I don't know" into "I'll start here."

The anchoring technique is one of the cognitive moves we teach in Meaning First Math—our program for bilingual children who have the concepts but can't access them through traditional instruction.