Have you ever cried with frustration? I have seen children desperately try to hide their tears as they wrestle with a piece of work that they find really difficult. I have seen children cry because they feel like failures. I have comforted children who are sobbing because they are exhausted but they still haven't finished all of their work.
So what is going on?
Feelings of failure come about because there is a standard that is not being reached, the child feels like they are not good enough. But where does this standard come from? It can come from parents or teachers, but more often than not the standard is imaginary and the child has imposed it upon themselves. When children are learning at home instead of a classroom they have no way of knowing how everyone else is doing, or what their teacher's expectations are. There are fewer limits on how long they spend on their work, and they can end up pushing themselves too hard. Feeling like a failure and crying with frustration can become a regular experience.
Helping a child to deal with feelings of failure and frustration can be life changing, but it is not an easy thing to do. It takes time and effort, and sometimes the guidance of someone like me.
Watching a child cry over their work taught me a very important lesson: you cannot separate learning from emotion. As a teacher, I had to deal with the learning first and foremost. 'I will fix this problem by helping the child with the work that is causing the anguish'. But I knew I wasn't fixing the real problem: the child's feelings about themselves and their beliefs about how learning worked. That is why I became a coach. The Children I work with still feel frustrated, but it becomes a productive feeling, a feeling that is telling them they need to take action to stop the frustration. There are no more tears.
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