A concerned father email’s his 1st graders 30 second math test to his teacher. He rants, “You should think before giving these timed test. My son knows all of these, when he has the time to do them! …..” The picture shows the son’s paper missing more than half of the problems. What’s the situation? The son is most likely crying and talking to himself, “I hate math. Math is hard. I can’t do math. My teacher is mean. I don’t like school. I’m not good at school.” WOW, that’s a lot, but a lot of those seeds are now planted. The father has a right to be concerned, but also he has a lot he can do, as does the teacher and the young son.
Perspective or seeing is trained. We all know that the first time we do something, we may not do so good or fail. This may even happen a few times. No big deal, if we keep at it we will soon get it and be successful. This is the step back perspective.
When you are in the midst of it all, going for the success with all you’ve got, it’s a different perspective. How did you do? Well, I was mainly on automatic, but some problems didn’t feel right so I tried to correct them. OK! Now, let’s step back and look where you are on the road to success? (road to success: abundant failure and small little wins) It looks like I got 40% of them right, which is 3% better than last time. I can and will do this with a little more practice and training. I am always growing and getting better. I never pray for things to get easier, I always pray for me to get stronger. I want to build my habit machine to be my most amazing habit machine ever! (compare to self)
I’m sure the son wants to feel good in his Dad’s eyes, and his own eyes too! Dad be sure he checks his own eyes too! Training and practice are the amazing thing that will allow that. Dad, teaching and training your son how to make training and practice fun and rewarding in itself is critical. The goal of feeling good for suffering through training and practice will only last so long. Training and practice must be rewarding in itself and your son must be trained to be responsible and capable of making training and practice fun and rewarding in itself. Hey teachers, you and dad can teach and model this and monitor and applaud when he has made his training and practice fun and rewarding.
When training and practice is fun and rewarding, the results naturally take care of themselves! Am I saying kids should love homework???? Yes, its a training by you (not society or culture) It’s a success principal. I will even go a step farther and say train them to find, assign themselves homework and love doing it! Now, we are talking success principal! Now we are talking loving challenge. Now we are talking believing in themselves. Now we are talking! Train! Train! Train!
Dogs are trained in a secluded place, to walk beside their master and obey commands. Then they take them out in a somewhat distracting place and train them to walk beside their master and obey commands. Then a more distracting place. It’s just like math. You get all the time in the world to do the problems. Then push with time tests. We are looking to see the automatics, the without thinkings, that are solidy there. Running a football field can be done quickly. Add a few tacklers and it becomes a little more challenging. These are all just examples of the road to success: abundant failure with small wins.
Let’s see, we have the road to success traveled and fueled by training and practice. Oh, and the training and practice must be made intrinsically rewarding as the “success” usually isn’t enough to fuel the training and practice by itself. What about the labeling of himself and the world outside him: I can’t do math, school is hard and teachers are mean?
Are they stuck or growing habit machines? At any moment we feel very stuck. Remember the step back perspective? That’s right you have to calm down and pull yourself out of the tumultuous event and step back. Now, you have to have the road to success, practice and training fuel, intrinsically rewarding practice and training already set up. Then the idea we are going to make real will be easier for them to grasp: The are very capable, trainable, habit machines. Building this machines is so much fun and rewarding in itself. The idea of building themselves as their most amazing machine ever is just the icing on the cake!
Society and culture believe this and they don’t. It’s not an automatic, to believe this, as our training is: to give up easy. School curriculum, busy parents, limited time and funding push us to give up easy and go for a label or as stated more politically correct: work with your strengths! …. or as touted in the unchallengeable fairy tales: be who you are, not somebody else. I propose: you don’t know how great a person you can become. But, any form of these “give up easy” campaigns will never let you know how great you could be. Abe Lincoln became president? Tell me when should he have given up? He had failure after failure. But, he couldn’t give up as he was trained early to walk miles for a book. …. Oh, yes, not giving up is a success principal, not taught or trained by schools, parents or situations. It’s too hard and inconvenient, … but stuck, fixed, labeling, in all its disguises, thrives. Be stuck with yourself is warm and fuzzy, just not a success principal.
Set up and preparation is everything. Would some prep allow this young son to handle the results of this 30 second math quiz better and maybe even very productively. Could he have actually been excited about the results and thrown himself into the challenge of building his most capable habit machine into its next amazing form? Setup and prep teacher and parents. Be strong and don’t succumb to societal training of the mean teacher and the stuck incapable child and giving up easy training. Hold solid to the most amazing road to success powered by intrinsically rewarding training and practice. Hold strong to the very capable trainable machine your son has. Teach this, model this then train him to be responsible for his own set up and prep. After all, he is the one that will get to regal in the machine he builds or suffer in it. Go for regal! It’s all in the training!
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