Assessing Readiness – the Right Lesson at the Right Time
Our daily news during the COVID-19 pandemic is catastrophic and not getting any better. At least, that’s how it can feel after reading the paper. Chris is the saint in our family who wades through the flood of disaster stories, headline by headline, and then filters them into a manageable report for the rest of the family. This job takes its toll. He is not himself.
The best times of the day are when I see Chris in the familiar role of teacher to our kids. This is the magic of parents acting as teachers, rather than disciplinarians or taskmasters—or, as the crisis might drive us to be, as people too terrified of the state of the world to provide stability for our kids. The weight of the world disappears when you engage in education with your kids. I’ve seen it.
Chris came to breakfast with a head full of headlines. He mentioned the number of cases, the rate at which they are going up, and how the rate of change is changing from bad to worse.
“How the rate of change is changing?” asked my nine-year-old son.
Chris paused to reflect on the question, then responded, “Are you up for a little calculus?”
I then watched an energy shift of epic proportions as Chris described an electric Vespa motor-scooter, miles per hour, and acceleration. He drew graphs in the air and made motor sounds for effect. He checked for understanding along the way, stopping at big words like ‘derivative’ and ‘function.’ Afterward, even I understood. (My first calculus class had me crying in my professor’s office—but that’s a story of resilience for another day.)
Who does calculus over pancakes and juice? With kids?
We are writing this series of posts on how to effectively parent as teachers so that you may find strength, adaptability, and recovery in this time of extreme challenge. Learning is powerful for building resilience. So is service—teaching, after all, is arguably the highest form of service one person can provide. Our last section was about the importance of not overwhelming your kids as you teach—nor setting the bar too low. (Has everyone experienced either of those pitfalls in the past couple weeks?) Today’s lesson is about assessing your kids so you can succeed in finding the right balance for success.
Assessing readiness is sometimes not easy.
“Wow, you’ve grown so much since I last saw you!”
Our children never seem to grow until a distant relative says those words. Their development is so gradual—physically, mentally, and emotionally—that we parents hardly notice it happening before our eyes. When was the magical day when they could put on their own shoes or finally memorized their multiplication tables? We often miss it and wait too long to realize their potential.
Compounding this delaying effect, we are known to shield our children from failure. We assume that if we can protect them from the circumstances in which they might fail, we will be providing them with a great service. We are, of course, wrong. The challenges that lead up to potential failure are tremendous opportunities for developing the first components of resilience—strength and adaptability. Failure itself is the opportunity to practice the third—recovery.
Assessing readiness is an art, not a science.
Children are nuanced creatures with continually fluctuating abilities and levels of resilience. When choosing what to teach on a given day, we ought to consider such factors as diet, amount of sleep, and general disposition. On a day full of COVID anxiety, for example, skip the big projects and keep learning lighthearted. While failure is an opportunity to practice recovery, we don’t need to go out of our way to create an overabundance of failures.
Lastly, the world seems to be getting more competitive by the day, and parents are not immune to this trend. We desperately want our children to succeed, and we sometimes push them very hard to make this success happen. That may be the right way to build a career, but not a life. Now, more than ever is the time to slow down and remember the simple joys of life, rather than striving to achieve some abstract extrinsic goal.
Assessing Readiness is possible with these thoughts in mind:
Start small and work your way up. Be aware of general disposition and daily fluctuations. Be careful not to let competitiveness drive you. Accept failure as part of becoming resilient—remember that recovering from small failures is how we prepare ourselves to meet with disaster—even ones of global proportions.
You’ve got this! Share a wonderful day of learning and service with your kids!