Gumption For Sale
Posted by Cottontimer on 03 Oct 2006 | Tagged as: Me, Parenting, Thoughts
At a coffee morning yesterday, a few of us parents got to talk with the headmistress (principal) about plans for the school and what’s best for our children in general. One of my questions to her was how to instill in our kids self-confidence, independence from bad peer influences, and an internal drive to strive for excellence.
In some ways, I think ego or an excessive sense of confidence can dampen the desire to go one step further. People can easily become complacent if they are too confident in their abilities and mistakenly think that they’ve accomplished all that needs to be done. Because the truth is, no one is ever done. There is always room for improvement. Sometimes the room is as big as a mansion.
I don’t really believe anyone is ever truly at their best. I might work hard and at this given moment work to the max of my abilities, but that doesn’t mean that I can’t work harder or learn more to do more. There’s always a feeling that I want to one-up myself. I don’t look to others and want to kick their butts for the sake of competitiveness. I compare myself to others to get a sense of what I might be able to accomplish. I certainly never think that I’m the queen of the heap. There’s always a bigger heap to scale.
Why am I concerned that we’re pumping up our kids’ egos far beyond proportion and reality? In a report comparing the U.S. math and science educational system to seven other Asian countries’, one thing was clear: students in the U.S. lag far behind on test scores but have the highest self-confidence. Disturbing.
The headmistress didn’t have an answer to how we can teach our kids initiative, ambition, and drive. In her opinion, much of it comes from the inside. And when I ask my parents how they taught us the same qualities, they can’t think of anything specific they did. I don’t even think they expected us to be the best or kept on us to work work work all the time.
I wish I knew what keeps me going because I’d package it up and sell it. If you’ve got any gumption to sell, I’m interested.
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TBH, I think ambition for ambition’s sake is way over rated. Met so many people over the years who go down that tunnel – and it is a tunnel – sometimes they come out of the other side, but by then it’s too late to do the stuff they ‘really’ want to do. Oh well…
Hey, Graham! So weird to see you signing in as your proper name rather than noodlepie!
I don’t think I articulated my ideas very well here. I just had to get them out and real quick too because I needed to go pick up Stephen.
I agree that ambition alone shouldn’t be all that keeps a person going but I wonder what lights the fire under people’s butts? I like to think that my greater purpose in life is help make people stronger both physically and in their relationships with other people (via my blogs, of course!). But maybe I just like being busy?!
*Sorry, edited the comment a few times in my haste….
Honestly, I think giving kids the freedom to explore their world and make mistakes, from floor-crawler stage onwards, is a vital element. No doubt it’s all more complex than that, but so many kids are constantly being told how wonderful they are and what a great job they are doing, that it is likely they’re not being given an accurate concept of the scale of “crap” to “excellent”. I try to be honest with my kids, without hurting their feelings. Sometimes feelings get hurt, but I don’t see it as helpful to lie to them.
I think through exploring and making mistakes, if the parent(s) are there to give some help or advice or slap a bandaid on an ouch, kids develop a concept of being able to achieve a goal they want to pursue.
How do you instill having goals, or the motivation to pursue them? I don’t have great thoughts on that- I think it’s personality-based in large par.t
yes, rambly. trying to catch up on blogs in a very short amount of time.
hope it made some sort of sense!
Low test scores and high self-esteem? It’s the American way.
Dear Cottontimer,
This was my area of improvement on my Evaluation this year in January. My boss didn’t think that I “praised” our employees adequately. He wanted me to motivate people more by always praise them eventhough the projects that they turned in were crappy works!!!! This is where the system fails miserably!!!!!
I’m trying Karate and Swimming as confidence builders with my kids. Seems to be working. So far, Alexis has conquered Canada and Jake is focusing on New Zealand and Australia.
Deb: I usually use the line “That’s a good try but let’s try another way.” He buys that line now but will probably start rolling his eyes at me sometime soon. haha
And I definitely don’t think I could muster the enthusiasm to give truly false praise. That’s just tiresome!
BlueStar: That just makes no sense to me. How do people do better if they think they’re perfect? AHHHH!!
mdmhvonpa: You guys are awesome with the activities. I just keep thinking Stephen’s too little but I think it may be because I’m too lazy to take him. Gah. Anyway, please keep A and J away from China. We plan to conquer that place first.
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