Jay, my son, is sitting at the table frowning at his Chinese homework, “You can do it if you try”, we tell him. “We believe in you. When you push yourself, you do really well at this”, we continue encouraging him. But then we go too far, “You’re really smart, just take your time and you’ll get it all right.”
As parents, we all (at least I hope all), want to encourage our children to do well at school, but how do we know if we’re pushing encouraging them too much? And what was wrong with that last thing we said to Jay?
The problem is, we set the bar too high, and this is something that both SO, my wife, and I have done in the past. By telling him we know he can get a perfect score, we’ve set the bar too high. What happens when he does, or at least believes, he does his best and it’s not quite good enough, he doesn’t get the perfect score? Or worse, he gets an average mark? Well, then we’ve become liars, telling him something that he’s just seen proven false.
As I’m sure most people know, this leads to demotivation, a feeling that they’re not good enough, that no matter how hard they try, they’re letting us down. So then, next time he has homework, he doesn’t try as hard, or just refuses to do it, because he knows he’s not going to get that perfect score and he’ll let us down again. It’s just not worth the effort.
So what, as good loving parents, do we do about it?
What we’re doing, and yes the above is based on reality, we’ve been there and done that, is to modify our speech so that we encourage him to do his bests, without putting extra pressure on him to be perfect. So instead of saying “You can do it”, I have to change and say “I just want you to do your best, and I’ll be proud of you.”
It’s not the easiest, and I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve caught myself starting to tell him he can get it all right. So then I have to change what I was going to say, and pull back on the encouragement so that it really is encouraging and not pushing for perfection. It’s especially hard when I am sure that he can do it perfectly, since I’ve seen him do it on several occasions.
Since we’ve started moderating our speech and encouragement, we have seen it work. Even though we still have times when he is resistant to do his homework, we have also seen that he can get top marks when he tries. We’re still early on in changing how we encourage him, so it’s still a working progress. It’s something we’re committed to, something that we know is necessary.