There is an opinion that at school a child should study well in all subjects — only then can we talk about his talent. However, in reality, everything is much more complicated. And if you want to raise a truly happy person, you will have to abandon some of the stereotypes of education.
There is more and more talk today about the need to develop precisely those abilities and talents that are most expressed in a child, and not rest on those areas where he feels worse than most.
For example, do you need an A (or even a B) in math if your child is not given mental arithmetic and geometry problems? It is better to focus on literary projects (if you like it, of course) or on sports, where the child shows above-average abilities. After all, by adjusting his mathematics to the level “like everyone else”, we will lose precious time and effort that could make a talented runner or journalist out of a young man.
If we focus on strengths, then the results will be outstanding. The modern world is extremely tolerant of gaps in knowledge, if a person has a depth in understanding one, albeit a very narrow, area. So focusing on some areas and pulling on the “passing score” of the rest is slowly becoming a trend.
What is the right thing to do: to strive to be the first, or to profess the principle of “the main thing is participation”?
The answer to this question cannot be unambiguous. It all depends on the child and his psychological characteristics. Born winners don’t need to be reminded to train to be number one. The strength of the desire to win and so will lead them through all the difficulties of the path of the Olympian. But let’s be honest — there are not many such children.
What if the child is not ambitious? At the same time, he has remarkable abilities and could … but does not want either a result or work to achieve it. Then an attentive mother, understanding the situation, takes on the role of a flagship, grabs the child by the hand and drags her up — to victory.
She takes him to training, does math olympiad problems with him, and looks for unique flute master classes. What happens? The child does not learn to set goals, he initially had problems with this, and then his mother actively helps. In addition, he does not receive the result of his efforts, because the efforts are not his, because everything is done under duress.
The child, perhaps, will become the best at some stage, but only because of the inability to deny the mother her goals and ambitions. “Son, please your mother, take part in the next concert (tournament, competition)”, “If you want to be worth something in this life, you should have started in kindergarten”, “In our family, everyone has always been the best!”
The result will be rightfully mother’s … And so on until adolescence begins. Until the mother encounters protest in the form of apathy, and even worse, switching to “harmful” activity.
It turns out that a capable child, not sharpened for competition, must be supported in the area of uXNUMXbuXNUMXbhis interests, look for what can become a real goal for him, to which he will be ready to go, overcoming himself.
And this goal may turn out to be on a completely different plane — not to be the best, but, for example, only to participate in some prestigious competition without taking any place there, or to write your own script for a historical film.
This will be of real value to the child, although it may remain misunderstood by parents.
Nevertheless, it is this experience that will be useful to him in life, will allow him to become a winner when the victory will really decide his fate, and not satisfy his mother’s ambitions.
Unfortunately, mothers often see only their goals, and everything else for them is “pampering” and “entertainment”. So easily and imperceptibly for ourselves and the child, we devalue his interests, replacing them with our own. But parental goals do not attract as much as their own, parental ambitions do not bring satisfaction — only fatigue.
“So give them free rein — they won’t get out of the phone at all!” I often hear. But the phone is just a salvation from an ambitious mother who drags her child along a path that only she understands. It is useless for him to want something of his own — his mother will not accept it anyway, and he quickly gets tired of running somewhere for the sake of his mother. And then procrastination comes to the rescue. And the phone, with its social networks, instant messengers and games, is just right for a child who needs to hide…