Children – Never Give Up on Them
Coaches, teachers, parents, administrators, and counselors should never give up on a child. Children need and want guidance. They may not act like it, but they do. They may not overtly accept the bits of wisdom given to them by the adults in their lives and they may not act like the role models in their lives, but they are learning from both.
Many times adults may feel there is nothing more they can do for a child. They may reason that the child doesn’t want to learn, doesn’t want to participate, doesn’t care, is lazy, is easily distracted and therefore, becomes a distraction. The list of reasons why a child isn’t succeeding is nearly infinite.
Children
Most honest coaches and educators will admit to instances when they thought a student should give up and pursue another activity. Good coaches and teachers will quickly come to their senses and ask themselves why these issues are present with a particular child. Why is she distracted? Why doesn’t she want to participate? Why is she not progressing?
There are a lot of variables that play a role in a child’s success or failure and whether they persist or dropout of an activity. A useful technique for anyone who works with children is to visualize these variables on a bar graph, each with its own level of competence. If a child is frustrated, unmotivated, and just not having fun, the cause is likely rooted in one of the areas represented by a short bar on the graph.
In the world of teaching children, whether that be athletics, academics, arts or mechanics, these phrases have been heard thousands of times, “she just doesn’t listen”, “he just isn’t capable”, “she’s lazy” or the one that inspired this article “I just don’t know what to do for her until she fixes her work ethic.” Whoa, stop the presses, rewind. Does any coach, teacher or parent really want to send a message to a child that says when you’ve fixed your problems, come to me and I’ll teach you, of course not.
The goal should be to look at each child’s bar graph and help them to be competent in all areas. An extra amount of time and effort should be given to the areas represented by the shortest bars on the graph. After all, those are the variables which will most likely cause frustration, practices that aren’t fun, and dropout. The greatest gains will be made in the areas of least competence. A gymnast who improves her flexibility from 90% competency to 95% will benefit from that, but not near as much as the gymnast who improves listening skills from 20% to 40%.
Adults who work with children will face potential frustration. It is at that point that they must decide to give support or give up. If you take time to find articles such as this one, you are most likely a “give support” kind of coach or teacher. Look at your mental bar graph for any child in question and find solutions to make those short bars grow. A coach or teacher who pulls a child back from near dropout to watch her succeed over and over in the future is a well rewarded educator. It’s okay for a teacher, coach or parent to ask “what if I’d given up?” Hopefully, none will ever have reason to ask “what if I’d tried a little harder?”
Children – Never Give Up on Them
