| Sylvia Rimm Below are two questions on a similar issue:
Q: I have a child in the gifted math program (fifth grade) who is not pleased with his first real challenge. He would like to quit. I do not want him to think or learn that we quit when things get hard.
A: Fifth grade often introduces new academic challenges for children, so your son may be experiencing difficult schoolwork for the first time. Because you indicate he has been identified as gifted, it's possible that his earlier work felt especially easy for him. His teachers believe that he is capable of doing more challenging math or they would not have placed him in the class. Children who experience difficult schoolwork for the first time often assume that they are mistakenly placed. They even fear asking teachers questions, just in case it appears to their teachers, themselves or peers that they aren't really "smart."
I would suggest that you request a conference with your son's teacher before you make any further decisions regarding his placement. If the teacher assures you by sharing past test scores or her observations that his placement is correct, you will feel more confident in discussing this issue with your son. Explain to your son that he deserves to have self-confidence, but you can't deliver that confidence. Instead, children develop confidence by accepting challenging opportunities that are initially somewhat frightening. When children successfully accomplish what they perceived as a difficult task, they recognize their own capability.
If they avoid challenge by escaping from experiences, children have no basis for confidence because their avoidance causes them to believe they couldn't have accomplished the task. This holds for intellectual challenge, leadership, physical challenge in sports, or musical or artistic challenge. For example, some children join one activity after another but soon drop out of all. When that pattern takes place, children often describe what is difficult and frightening as boring. A pattern of avoidance causes children to lose self- confidence.
We also like to remind children that the harder they work, the smarter they become, and vice versa: the smarter they are, the harder they'll work. Assure your son you don't expect him to be the smartest student in an accelerated math class, but only to do the best he can do, so that he can experience the excitement of accomplishment.
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Q: My child came home (seventh grade) and was happy she got a 'B' on her algebra test. I said a 'B' was good, but then I said, "did you study"? She said, "no, but we do a lot in class." I said, "a 'B' is good, but if you had studied a little bit, maybe you would have an 'A.'" How should I have approached that issue? I know she probably could have had an 'A,' and I don't want her to just accept a 'B.'
A: Your seventh-grader is experiencing a similar problem to the fifth-grader in our first question. She is not challenging herself and will not be able to earn the confidence she deserves. Encourage her to review her math at home for just 10 extra minutes a day, and she'll discover that making an effort pays off in building her confidence. You can ask her to make the extra effort experimentally for one-quarter of the school year. She'll be pleased at the results of her experiment.
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Dr. Sylvia B. Rimm is the director of the Family Achievement Clinic in Cleveland, Ohio, a clinical professor of psychiatry and pediatrics at the Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, and the author of many books on parenting. More information on raising kids is available at www.sylviarimm.com. Please send questions to: Sylvia B. Rimm on Raising Kids, P.O. Box 32, Watertown, WI 53094 or srimm@sylviarimm.com. To read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.
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