My son Jake asked me the other day what perseverance means.  I thought this was kind of funny because its certainly something he has struggled with in the past.  He has no problem sticking at something if he really enjoys it or if it comes easily to him but if its something that he’s not convinced is going to be a good thing then he is out pretty darn fast.  This gets frustrating when it is something that we’ve paid for him to attend, take the Circus Skills class that we enrolled him in last week.

He was really keen so I booked in and worked out what I was going to do with his younger brother while he spent 2 hours at the class.  Then on the day we were supposed to go he stated that he did not want to, that it was dumb and I couldn’t make him go.  Hmm, not the great start I was after.

We went anyway with lots of moaning and groaning and once we arrived I realised that I had the wrong day and it didn’t start till the next day.  Needless to state Jake was happy about this.  That night we talked about why he did not want to go and worked out it was because he did not know how to do circus acts and was worried he wouldn’t be able to do it.  We explained that the trainers would help him and so he went the following day without a problem.  During the 2 hour session he tried many things he hadn’t done before – skipping rope, balancing, juggling etc – and was happy about the experience.

The 2nd day he was happy to go but when my husband returned to pick him up and watch the last of the session Jake was refusing to participate and was happy to sit out and watch what was going on.  The trainers were very patient and tried many different ways to entice him back in without success.  His comment afterwards was that it was boring, they just did the same things he did the day before and he had done them already.

That night we discussed over dinner what had happened and Jake basically said that he was worried he wouldn’t be able to do things they asked him to, eg skipping rope, because although he did it the day before he stumbled a bit and the rope hit his legs a few times and he was worried that it might happen again.  I could relate to this as I often envisage things going wrong, even if it has gone right the first time.  Its like by doing it you glimpse a whole heap of possibilities that you had not thought of before and then those possibilities develop into scenarios where things turn out wrong and if they go on unchecked end up taking over and become overwhelming.  When this stuff comes up with Jake and I have the ability to pinpoint what the worry is then I always ask him ‘what is the worst thing that can happen?’ – this usually helps to diffuse it.  The key is catching it and getting him to speak about it.

One the last day the group put on a show and Jake not only participated in all the group stuff including skipping but he did a solo performance!  I was so proud of him.  He was proud too.

So back to perserverence or his perceived lack of it…I am not sure who learned the lesson here – Jake or me.  Perhaps both of us.  I heaped on the praise about how he stuck at it even though he’d wanted to give up and he felt good about his efforts and learnt that sometimes things don’t come easily but that it’s worth trying a bit harder.  I learnt that him not wanting to keep going had nothing to do with him being lazy and everything to do with fear and anxiety.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, March 29th, 2007 at 1:49 am and is filed under Parenting Tips. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.