I read a fabulous
article sent to me by Murray Blandford, a senior teacher here at Wellesley. Have a read as it is a beauty! (Resilience: A Lesson From Sochi by Sydney Finkelstein)
The bolded sentence stood out for me: ‘The complacent and the
arrogant do not accept personal responsibility. For them, failure is someone
else’s fault.’
We subscribe to a magazine, ‘Teachers
Matter’(1) and I was delighted to read three articles
based around the theme of promoting resilience in children. It doesn’t take a
rocket scientist to see what is so obvious. Hard work pays off. Michael Grose
in his article entitled, “True Grit” (p23) asks the question, ‘Talent or
persistence? Which would you chose for your child?’ Most parents when asked
this question opt for talent.
Grose’s conclusion is that ‘in the long
run conscientiousness serves a young person well when it is their default
position because when the stakes are high, and they really need to work hard,
they will automatically make the right choice.’
Thomas
L Friedman said, “I live by the motto that PQ + CQ is always greater than IQ.
You give me a kid with a high PQ, persistence and passion quotient, and a high
CQ, a high curiosity quotient, and I’ll take them over the kid with the high
IQ, intelligence quotient…In a world where all these tools are out there now
for everybody, the big divide in the world is not going to be the digital
divide, it’s going to be the motivational divide”
So how do you promote the traits of
‘true grit’ into our children without stealing their childhood or promoting a
life of ‘hard grind’. Grose encourages parents to actively promote grit
and persistence in children by making character part of the family’s
brand. Parents “…. can focus on
character in conversations. They can share experiences where character has paid
off for them in their lives.” In short, the values and language around
persistence should be part and parcel of the family’s conversations. Clearly parents would need to model such
values.
Robyn Pearce (Why Kids Need To be Resilience
Proofed )2 magazine argues that from an early
age let children feel the consequences of their actions. If children fail to
complete a task around home or work at school and they have the time and
intellectual capacity to achieve the task, insist that it is completed before
any ‘goodies’ are provided. She also
argues that parents should link pocket money to tasks. I tend to agree because
this not only promotes ‘taking responsibility’ but it also promotes financial
literacy. Learning to save for the treats of life or just dealing with the
necessities is an important lesson that many young people struggle with as an
adult if they have not had these values supported in their childhood.
I am a strong supporter of promoting
resilience in children and this small but powerful word of ‘grit’ is a word our
boys here regularly. If we want our children to evolve and grow to be the best
they can be, we must provide a learning culture of high expectations
encouraging personal bests. No pain, no gain! This sounds harsh but
this is the reality of life. I am not advocating ‘nose to the grindstone’ stuff
but providing the conditions for learning that insist on children pushing their
own boundaries. If we provide a thinking curriculum (hard fun) which
appropriately challenges the individual then follow up with the right
encouragement and expectation, then we have created a powerful learning
environment. If parents join us in this approach, we set children up for
success.
Some of the best parenting advice I have seen is from D.A.
Hutcheson, Head of Nightingale-Bamford School in NY city. She said,
“Life can often be a
struggle, and mostly we don’t enjoy that struggle. Yet life would be dull
without it. As a parent myself, I don’t like seeing my children struggle but it
is in that struggle where children learn the most. Really, as much as possible
we should let our children negotiate the bumps and ups and downs of school
themselves, rather than sweeping in to negotiate it all for them. That’s the
best gift we can give our children----so when we are not around, they can be
successful on their own.”
These are wise words
which really say it all.
