How to Ask for Help

Asking for help is hard. Here are some tips to help you do it.

Talk about it to someone else first

Before asking the person you want help from, try talking to someone else about the help you need. This person can be a friend or someone else you trust to hear your struggles with compassion. Seeing their positive reaction might make you feel more confident that you’ll get that reaction from your potential helper.

For example, I want to ask Tina for help with my math homework since I saw in class that she was finding it easy. However, we’re not close friends so I’m worried she’ll brush me off or insult me for not being able to do it myself. Instead, I talk to my close friend Max and tell him how I just need to be shown how to do the question a couple of times, then I know I’ll be able to do the rest on my own. He reassures me that that’s a totally reasonable thing to ask Tina for help with, and that she’s usually very happy to help people. He’s also never seen her be rude in the way I'm worried about. Now I feel more comfortable approaching Tina for help since I’m more sure I’ll get a good response.

Is it someone’s job?

When you’re at school (and at lots of other places for that matter) it’s literally someone’s job to help you. Need help because you’re feeling sick? The school nurse. Need help with subject selection? Year level coordinator. Need help with mental health? School councilor. Need help figuring out who to ask for help? Home room teacher.

It’s true that not everyone is good at their job, but lots of people are! Best of all, they’ve probably helped people with the same struggles as you dozens of times. What might feel like a big deal to you is probably an easy fix for them.

All of the people with jobs like these will either be someone you see regularly or they’ll have an office somewhere. If you see them in class, house meeting or assembly it’s best to wait until the end of the activity and go up to them as everyone’s leaving. You can say “Hi, I need some help with ___” and they’ll help you then and there, or let you know when you can have a better talk about it. If you want to keep it private you can say “Hi, can I talk to you about something privately?” They might be able to unlock a nearby classroom where you can talk about it with no-one listening in. For any really private conversations (harmful relationships or serious mental health issues for example) the school councilor is the only person at school who is “supposed” to help you with that, but if you aren’t willing to go to them about it, telling your most trusted teacher is a good idea.

Do it in writing

If you’re worried about someone’s reaction to you asking for help, writing down your request can allow them to have that reaction when you’re not there. For example, if you’re scared to ask your parents about getting a tutor you could leave them a note somewhere explaining how you have realized you need more help and you could address any concerns you think they might have in advance. In the note you can also write down a time when you’d like to talk about it so that you can mentally prepare or make it clear who you do and don’t want to talk about it with.

Your note might look like this:

Hi Dad,

I’m worried that I’m falling behind in Math because I didn’t do very well in my last test. Even though I studied a lot I just can’t figure out the hard questions and I don’t understand my teachers explanations when I ask her about them.

Maddie said she has a tutor who helped her with the practice exam and I think that would really help. Can I have a tutor? I don’t want to talk about it in front of Ben, can we talk about it after soccer?

Love, Mimi

Are notes a bit old fashioned? You could send it as a text!

Group together

If you know other people with the same problem you could ask for help together. This can be extra effective because your potential helper can see that many people are affected. For example, you and your friends could go up to your English teacher at the end of the lesson and say: “Hi Miss Schofield, for our last essay we all got the feedback that we need to improve our structure, but we don’t know what that means. Can you please explain the essay structure we’re supposed to be using?” If all of you ask together your teacher will see that it’s an important problem and you will have your friends there to support you if you get flustered. Your teacher might even decide to dedicate some class time to the problem!

Overall, asking for help can be scary, but it’s almost always a good idea. There are many people in your life who want to help you — you just need to let them know!