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How Do I Tell my Kids the Truth About Their Work
Your 8-year old has just finished a poorly played recorder rendition on a basic scale he’s been playing for the past 3 years. Do you applaud him as though he just finished a Carnegie Hall recital? Do you roll your eyes and say well done? or do you show him a YouTube video of a child his age playing Flight of the Bumblebee?
Do we leave our kids to just be? Do we push them to be more? How do we push them without fracturing their minds or their egos? How best should we share our feedback to them at every point in time?
Dealing with giving my child feedback has been a challenge, and I imagine that other parents face the same challenges too. On one hand, I am tempted to treat their average performance as okay and applaud them so as not to dampen their enthusiasm. On the other hand, I struggle with knowing that I might not be giving them good feedback, or that I might not be pushing them beyond their comfort zone to see what they are capable of achieving. Joseph Jackson, Michael Jackson’s father, and the manager of the Jackson Five, comes to mind. Would the Jackson Five have been able to fully unlock their artistic ability without their father’s fanaticism? Would Michael have turned out differently had his father not been so hard on them? Would the children have been happier as middle class, regular people, or did they fare better as the…
