‘I can’t DO it!’ she screamed in frustration, looking at me from under her too-big-for-her-head helmet. Eyes filling with enraged tears, she looked deep into my eyes, imploring me to fix it for her. To somehow move her from the often painful state of thankless effort into the joy of accomplishment.
My 3.5 year old is learning to ride a bike. She has one of those balance bikes, which teaches core balance and strength, and self-reliance, rather than starting off with pedals and stabilisers which allows movement more quickly, but arguably doesn’t teach the fundamental skill of holding balance and trusting your body – an essential skill. The upside of the balance bike? That she is learning the most fundamental skills required to ride a bike properly. The downside? That she has to spend a longer time feeling stuck and unaccomplished, stuttering along, struggling to put together the picture of what it is that she is ACTUALLY trying to do.
My heart breaks for her. I know, in my heart and bones, that this is all part of the process. That the best lesson I can teach her, is to appreciate the process of learning, to develop the invaluable skill of being OK with the phase of skill acquisition which feels like thankless effort. It happens with absolutely everything that we learn – you start off, and it’s just DIFFICULT. You feel stuck, light years away from what you want to accomplish, and you wonder what the point is.
You want so much to get to the stage of being able to do it unconsciously, of entering that flow state, but you can’t imagine how you will ever get there. Often, that frustration leads to procrastination, a refusal to keep trying, and, of course, you never get to the state that you have been striving for.
The funny thing is, I am finding that my own inability to appreciate process often rears its ugly head when I am helping her to learn new skills. I am learning to be philosophical about my own processes of learning, and have a good handle on my mental processes (some of the time, anyway), but seeing her frustration, her eyes welling up, the silent appeal that she makes to me when she is finding something difficult.. It tests my mettle. I WANT to fix it for her. I want to protect her from the struggle. But I know, on every level, that if I can maintain a sense of calm, a consistently relaxed approach to struggle, and share an appreciation for the process of learning and all of those little challenges of the mind and body along the way, she will be armed with something absolutely invaluable.
She will be able to take on absolutely ANYTHING. Because she will try, and when she struggles, she won’t feel like a failure. She won’t expect to be able to do things first time. She may hear the voice of her mum in her head, reminding her that it’s all part of the process, everyone struggles, and that with enough persistence and patience, she will be able to do whatever she wants. She will appreciate that struggle more than I ever could, because the appreciation of that struggle won’t be something that she has to learn in her adult life. It will simply be part of who she is.
That’s the dream, anyway. It’s not fair to put her under pressure to adopt this approach or to expect her to be some kind of zen master of course – but I hope I can break the cycle of allowing the fear of failure to stop her from daring to imagine that she can make any dream she has come true.
Easier said than done, though! If you’re a parent struggling with helping your child to learn new skills, and find that you feel frustrated or want to fix everything for them, you are NOT alone. I think these thoughts, and do my best, but I’m not there yet. We’re all on the journey together 😊
