Friday, March 9, 2012

Waiting for the Child to Fail by Mrs. Dorothy Barron


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

Parents Taking Charge in Education   http://mrsdbarron.blogspot.com



E-mail: barron.dorothy@yahoo.com


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