SHOW AND TELL (II)

Since we now know that children learn more by watching us than by listening to us, as parents we can use this to our advantage to impart values and attitudes.

The most important thing I learnt from this fact is that: I do not need to be perfect and so I should not expect my child to be perfect.

It amazes me how parents often pressure their children to excel in school when they themselves did not. Parents often tell me that they need their children to score in school so that they can go to university, get a degree, get a good job and so have a good life. When I ask them whether they knew this was so especially in the last economic down-turn, they would say no. In today’s world, and tomorrow’s for that matter, having a degree no longer guarantees a good secure job. And that is the truth. This is because there are simply too many graduates chasing too few jobs.

A university degree simply opens more doors. In tomorrow’s world, our children will need to be more resilient and creative to stay ahead. How then do we teach our children such qualities? By showing them that success is more about recovering from setbacks and about persistence built on sound values.

When my son was discouraged by his school grades, I shared with him how I struggled with Mandarin in school. I shared how one day I had to counsel a client using Mandarin and my client had to correct my usage of Mandarin. At first I was embarrassed. But later I discovered that my counselee had to have understood the issues involved in order to correct me. In that way, my weakness had in fact furthered the therapy work. I stopped being embarrassed about my poor Mandarin and started to put more effort to learning the language afresh.

This story helped my son to see that failing does not make a failure make, as long as we keep learning and growing. We learnt the meaning of that big word called “resilience”.