Myth of confidence - 4

About a month back, a Chinese couple, with their two and half year old daughter came to geniekids wanting to put her in our pre-primary school. They had withdrawn her from another school, because their daughter was not ready to go near other children, not ready to mix or play with other children and was in fact getting scared of other children. Add to this the fact that the child (and even the mother) did not know English or any other Indian language.

Two days back the father called me and gladly informed that now she mixes with other children and has become more expressive and "confident" of herself.

When most people talk of confidence, they talk of it as if this is something the child SHOULD have. In fact a lot of people get irritated when the child does not show confidence. And they start pushing the child. Result the child backs out even more, feeling even lesser confident.

But what would happen if we were to operate WITH FULL CONFIDENCE IN THE CHILD. If no matter what the child does - we communicate in many different ways - that we are confident of you and your abilities. All the geniekids team of facilitators did was consistently showed confidence in the Chinese girl, through Patience, Persistence and Perception (3Ps if all teachers showed, will change the compete scene of education in our country). They communicated to her that even if she choose not to mix, we were confidence that she can mix with other children.

No wonder a month only has brought magic out of her!

The other day while playing morning tennis, our ball went out of the fence. My partner's four year old ran and collected the ball to throw it over the wire-fence to us. Even before he could try, my partner dais, "come through the gate, you will not be able to throw it". The child ignored, tried, failed, and the ball fell back on his side of the fence. The partner chided, "I told you...".
I quickly intervened, "Let him try, I am sure he can throw, we will wait" and to the child, "Come on Sidharth, throw". The child, failed six times, and as the father grew more restless, the seventh attempt saw the ball came sailing over the fence with a big triumph on the child (and my face too! :-)

Realize just like geniekids teachers, I showed perception first, to sense that the child wants to try something, hitherto out of his reach, then showed patience and persistence as he tried and failed. But I could do all of this only because I had CONFIDENCE in the child.

To me the biggest myth of confidence is that "children should have it" and the biggest secret of developing it to "act as if they have it (the ability)".
The difference as exemplified above is huge. Theoretically, what happens when we show this kind of belief in our child, is that it builds tremendous self-belief in the child: a force that we believe is responsible for all the achievements of mankind.

If you have any other formula, do share it with us. But for us this is the talisman:

A lot of people have gone further than they thought they could because someone else thought they could.
 

By Ratnesh & Aditi Mathur
For www.geniekids.com

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