A mother of a five year old girl was struggling because the child did not enjoy writing. The child is intelligent, her teacher was full of praises and the girl was brilliant at literally everything in school.
She and her husband played an active role in the child’s upbringing. Her husband spent every spare minute playing with or reading to her once he was back from work. Both of them encouraged the child to do well and cheered her on when she did not do so well.
The only issue was her child did not enjoy writing and cried each time she fared badly or lost a game, even when they played as a family. Their child was allergic to failing and they tried to let her win every time they played together, the mother told me recently.
Parenting is like dancing, where you need to be in sync with the energy of your child yet maintaining a balance. As a child grows he or she will push you and test you, sometimes on purpose, and at other times to understand themselves better.
At five, it is too early to decide whether the child will not enjoy writing forever. We, as parents, need to understand that children are like play dough and give them time to develop their likes and dislikes. Just the way you might have outgrown liking candy and moved onto dark chocolate, kids need to acquire a taste for the things.
As we spoke, I conjectured that the mother herself was a perfectionist and I imagined how immaculate her home must be. She laughingly agreed. She realised her own need for perfection was not allowing her to digest the fact that she was not good at something. The child had picked up this subtle energy from the mother and therefore knew that her not doing well might not get the appropriate response from her parent and so has to be the winner each time.
Children are smarter than we think they are. They pick up very early on what makes their parents happy and what makes them react contrarily. The tantrums on a shop floor can make most parents buy a Porsche to shut their child up, a trick children learn very early on.
So be cognisant of the fact that your need for perfection could easily signal to your child that anything less is not acceptable and does not make for a happy mummy, they would much rather not try at all or if they do and fail tears are a great way to distract you from being disappointed in them. Your child fears failure because he fears disappointing you. Perfectionism and fear of failure are partners in crime.
In most cases I ask parents to get more involved with their child and spend more time, in this particular case I asked them to step away from the child and give her space. Allow her to fail, allow her to lose while playing and allow her to be hurt by others.
When parents give space to the child to fail they are actually communicating to their child that they trust them to get back up.
— Sunaina Vohra is a certified Youth and Family Life Coach at Athena Life Coaching in Dubai. For more information log on to athenalifecoaching.com or call 056-1399033. This is an interactive column on parenting skills and child behaviour. If you have a query, write to tabloid@gulfnews.com
