Waiting for the
Child to Fail by Mrs. Dorothy Barron
Parents and Educators, sometimes even the best of us fail to
see that which is directly in front of us and can be guilty of setting our
child/ren up for failure. We can become
so focused on the child accomplishing or achieving a task and/or goal in
education we instead succeed at causing or bringing about the opposite
effect(s).
Too often, we expect the child/ren to fail and we simply
wait for failure to occur. To make things worse, we repeat the same actions
that lead to the same results – failure; let me illustrate this point.
It has always been important to me to set a beautiful and proper
table for the family; it was also important that our children be taught proper table
etiquette when they were small. The youngest managed to knock over his glass
during meals and no amount of instructions to our son helped. Knocking over his
glass became a habit; a habit perceived as a failure that we came to expect. We then became accustomed each meal for this
perceived failure to occur.
In this particular situation, the problem was not with our
child; the problem was with the adults. It took a while, but suddenly I realized
I was so focused on the table setting and etiquette, that I overlooked the
capability of a very young child trying to handle a glass that was too large
for his little hand(s). It took a matter
of seconds to remedy the problem and you should have seen the expression on our
son’s face- smiles and confidence that “I can do it!”
Parents and Educators, we want children to succeed, but sometimes
have come to expect and await failure, instead and thereby, making the
situation worse for all, especially the child (resulting in lack of
self-esteem, confidence and will), and then some wonder and question, “what is
wrong with the child/ren?”
The lesson learned – It was not that our child was not able
to accomplish the task; he simply was not provided the proper tools to enable
him to succeed. He had to and did grow and mature to the point of utilizing adult-size
utensil(s), but such took and takes time.
Mrs. Dorothy Barron, Founder
E-mail: barron.dorothy@yahoo.com
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