An expert talks about the different emotional issues which can affect the way children learn in school.
Although emotional hungers remain constant throughout human life,
particular needs intensify at different periods. Let's look first at
, then at middle school which encompasses pre-and early adolescence, and finally at high school and beyond, the kingdoms of
Young children progress from learning to love to loving to learn.
Their first teachers are, of course, their parents. When that
relationship is warm, abundant and trusting, children draw from it
deeply, freely, and often. They respond to parental love with new
growth, they respond to parental pride with new daring, and they respond
to parental trust with new faith in themselves. They also respond to
parental disappointment with curdled self-concept, they respond to
parental rejection with withered embrace of life, and they respond to
parental loss with a subtle or overt death of the heart.
From the lessons of daily life, each child builds an armamentarium of
attitudes and assembles a wardrobe of costumes and disguises. Above
all, young children fear the loss of parental love. Since they believe
"I am what I can make work," their introduction to formal learning, with
its first successes or failures, dictates their feelings of worthiness
or unworthiness to hold that great and irreplaceable prize, parental
love.
Practically, this means parents must exercise extreme caution in
starting the child's formal schooling. This decision should not be based
on the timetable of the socially correct carpool but on the child's
developmental readiness for the tasks presented. Once your child is in
school, you as parents must be vigilant about progress or problems in
early reading and writing. A tragic casualty of the recent reading wars
between whole language and phonics has been that some children have
never been shown the method(s) that would help them succeed.
Consequently, they feel stupid, unworthy, or both, and often try to
hide the extent of their difficulty from their parents, fearing
banishment, or withdrawal of love and approval should the truth be
known. Consider the added distress when the child has siblings for whom
academic tasks are a snap.
If your child has trouble in the early levels of school, get help
immediately!
Do not wait to see if the child will grow out of it. Prevention is
always easier than remediation. Learning differences don't disappear
spontaneously, and talent doesn't bloom in a vacuum. If you worry that
receiving extra help will make Johnny/Sue feel different, forget it. A
child already feels different by virtue of what he can and cannot do.
Encourage the discovery of the big message: different can be successful.
The child who has learned to love deserves to love to learn.
Middle schoolers need parents and teachers who reach to the heart, then teach to the head.
The pre- or early adolescent has shed a mouthful of baby
teeth, acquired big choppers, and wears enormous sneakers. In addition,
many of today's middle schoolers have a large vocabulary of sexually
explicit terms they fling around with noisy glee. Cumulatively, these
milestones may create an incorrect impression of overall maturity and
semi-adulthood. But underneath the appearance of sophistication, these
kids are still young, unformed, longing for leadership, aching for
behavioral guidelines and social limits, and profoundly grateful when a
parent has the courage to say "No."
In school, as pediatrician Mel Levine tells us, kids in this age
group are guided by one governing agenda: the avoidance of humiliation
at all costs. This may mean that a student with weak handwriting or poor
spelling, whose written assignments come back covered with red slash
marks, may prefer not to hand in written work. The child whose
contributions to classroom discussions are greeted with hoots or jeers
(or quiet snickers from the power points of the class) will clam up. The
kid who reads poorly may disrupt discussion of last night's reading by
burping or other wind-driven activities. The kid who understands the
hardest math intuitively or who remembers Juliet's speech by heart may
conceal intellectual power in order to blend in with the group.
Reach to the heart, teach to the head. One thirteen year old's three
favorite Christmas presents were a book of logic puzzles, a nightgown
for her American Girl doll, and a blue fur telephone. In the words of
the poet Anon:
I ride a yo-yo
In your presence
Thirteen's a year of
Addled essence.
In high school and beyond, kids reach for two simultaneous and contradictory goals: anonymity and fame.
Beyond native intelligence, academic success requires a
ready supply of basic skills, organization, the ability to juggle facts
and vocabulary from many disciplines, a relatively quiet place to do
homework, enough food and sleep, and some free time to ruminate on new
information, concepts, and connections. In today's culture many of these
are missing before the student even enters ninth grade. Parents need to
be aware of these needs and supply them as fully as reality allows.
After-school jobs, athletic practices, and play rehearsals (not to
mention learning arcane hobbies for the college application process)
teach kids that there isn't enough time. The corollary of this is to
reward them for skimming the surface of their work in order to check it
off the list. The emotional price tag of skimming is the discounting of
deep enjoyment and immersion. Kids who pay this price feel hurried and
inadequate.
If average kids fall into these traps, what about those who struggle?
Some drop out physically, emotionally, or intellectually. Others,
preferring wickedness to invisibility, who hang around to see the action
but won't risk competing, are particularly vulnerable to drugs and
booze. Still others, fearful and lonely, craving closeness and intimacy,
gravitate to sex and gangs. The English poet Stevie Smith says, "I was
too far out all my life and not waving but drowning."
Parents of this age group, you need spine, humor, a clear sense of
your own values, and a willingness to be temporarily unpopular. You also
need to build into family time ample opportunities to enjoy your kid
and let that contagion do its benevolent job.
In the words of the poet ee cummings, "I would rather learn from one
bird how to sing than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance."
Hold fast to what you know and believe. Be of joyful voice.
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