The Advantage of Failure

In our society failure in any form is feared. Mediocrity is maligned as being unacceptable. And anonymity is insufferable by those who watch and wait. If you listen to main stream child experts they will tell you that a child's self esteem needs to be nurtured and boosted in order for them to be a productive and contributing member of society. They say that children must be empowered and that their feelings should be protected. As anything, there is some truth to these theories however practical wisdom reveals a very different reality.

Babies are fully self centered. The whole world revolves around their own needs. They give no thought to others and what is best for the people around them. In fact, they need to be selfish because they are 100% needy. As children grow, the maturing process reveals that it is not healthy to be selfish in all circumstances. It is often necessary to put our personal desires on hold or work through a painful process on our own. It is considered a mark of maturity to come to this conclusion and learn to live with it peacefully. Children will learn these realities in various ways. A child will learn patience as they sit quietly in church, they will learn selflessness as they sit on the bench waiting for their turn to play, they will learn self motivation while they watch others succeed as they struggle. It is not automatically bad for a child to fail a test, or sit on the bench, or get in a fight with friends, or just be average at something. These are all natural events in the process of character building. The train leaves the track when adults do not allow children to experience discomfort or suffer consequences for bad choices. In their attempt to protect the self esteem and empower their child, they are unwittingly crippling them with unrealistic expectations.

These painful realities of life are what allows a person to grow strong emotionally. It is a wise parent that will allow their child to struggle through decision making, that will allow them to fall and fail but pick them up and encourage them to try again, that will support them in their time on the bench with as much passion as when they get the opportunity to score the winning goal. The trial of life is how children learn to be strong and productive.

The Importance of Play

I was thinking today of the importance of hands on play in young children, and the academic benefits it represents later in life. There has been a noticeable trend in recent years of children lacking fine motor skills in pre-school and kindergarten classes. These motor skills are necessary in building a foundation for writing and penmanship as well as perseverance and problem solving.

In the not so recent past, children would spend hours playing with toys and dolls each day. These toys were often small and had many points of alignment and articulation that required the student to use cross body motor skills in order to solve a specific problem. It seems overly simple but the very act of dressing a Barbie doll is a significant cognitive challenge for a four year child. As you consider the process, it requires the child to use both hands which stimulates both sides of the brain and literally builds synapses (pathways) between the hemispheres. Reasoning skills are brought into play as they evaluate the alignment, positioning and orientation of the clothing to the body. This is the same reasoning the student uses to evaluate alignment, positioning and orientation of a pencil to a piece of paper. If you have ever dressed a Barbie you also will realize that the clothing at times gets hung up on the fingers of the doll or requires the child to re-articulate the doll in order to slide the clothing into place. This challenges the child to focus on a problem and persevere through the completion of the project. Finally, when the dressing is complete there is a satisfaction of a job well done and the immediate reward of being able to play with a fully dressed doll.

This is just one example of the academic and cognitive value of hands on play. These benefits cannot be accomplished in front of a TV or computer screen. It is the collective wisdom of generations and should be embraced by all parents.