As parents, we all want to see our children find success and happiness in life. However, the process of growing up inevitably includes more than a few bumps and bruises, with highs and lows and unexpected surprises all along the way. When we see our children struggling with a difficult task or situation, a failure or a loss, it’s easy to assume we need to swoop in and save the day. However, are we doing our child a disservice by not allowing him to struggle? Where do we draw the line between supporting our child and smothering him?
Teaching “Grit”
A current buzzword under debate in the world of education is “grit”. A growing body of educators and child psychologists are building the case that, above test scores and other traditional methods of measuring cognitive ability and achievement, it is more important that we focus on creating “gritty” kids – that is, nurturing the qualities of persistence, determination and resilience, often referred to as “life skills”.
“This quality of being able to sustain your passions, and also work really hard at them, over really disappointingly long periods of time, that’s grit,” explains Angela Duckworth, a psychology professor at the University of Pennsylvania who coined the term, winning a MacArthur “genius grant” for it.
As the concept catches on, a number of chartered and independent schools around the country are overhauling curriculum and classroom methodology in the hopes of creating grittier kids – placing heavy emphasis on learning from mistakes, growth and improvement due to hard work.
Tom Hoerr, leader of the New City School, a private elementary school in St. Louis that has also been working on grit, shares that, “One of the sayings that you hear around here a great deal is, ‘If our kids have graduated from here with nothing but success, then we have failed them, because they haven’t learned how to respond to frustration and failure.’ “
“The message is that life isn’t always easy,” Hoerr says. His goal is to make sure “that no matter how talented [students are], they hit the wall, so they can learn to pick themselves up, hit the wall again and pick themselves up again, and ultimately persevere and succeed.” Hoerr adds that the adjustment to the new methodology can be difficult for many parents. “It’s really easy to talk about in the abstract,” Hoerr says. “Parents love the notion of grit; they all want their kids to have it. However … no parent wants their kid to cry.”
So how does a parent decide when to step in and when to let a child struggle? As Sadhguru discusses below, there’s no magic formula for all children. Sadhguru begins by relating the story of a yogi’s unexpected encounter:
Raising Butterflies
Sadhguru: “…One day, this yogi saw a cracked cocoon from within which a butterfly was struggling to emerge. The cocoon shell was too hard. Usually, the butterfly struggles constantly for almost forty-eight hours to emerge from the cocoon. If it doesn’t succeed, it will die. The yogi saw this and, out of his compassion, he used his nail and opened the cocoon so that the butterfly could come free. But when it emerged, it could not fly. It is that struggle to break out of the cocoon that empowers the butterfly to use its wings and fly. What is the use of a butterfly that cannot fly? A lot of people, in what they think is love for their children, have made their children like this. The children don’t fly in their life.
So how do we know whether we are pampering the child? There is no standard rule for all children. Each child is different. Some parents in their aspiration or ambition to make their children super-strong have unnecessarily put their children through too much hardship. These parents want their children to become what they themselves could not become. In trying to fulfill their ambitions through their children, some parents have been extremely cruel to their children. Other parents, believing that they are very loving to their children, have over-pampered them and made them powerless and useless in the world.
It is certain discretion. No perfect line can be drawn as to how much to do and not do. Different children may need different levels of attention, love and toughness. It is like you came and asked me while I was standing in the coconut garden, ‘How much should I water each plant?’ I said, ‘A minimum of fifty liters.” But if you go home and pour fifty liters on your rose plant, it will die. So you must see what kind of plant you have in your house.
There are no standards; these standards at homes and in schools have been extremely cruel upon children and are killing them in many ways. School life generally is taking the childhood out of them. If you take childhood out, you will have adults who behave like children. Have you noticed how many adults today behave like teenagers. Many of them, because they have missed their childhood, are now acting like children. You can see this very strongly manifesting in the western world. It is very important that a child remains a child. There is no hurry to make him into an adult because you cannot reverse it later. When he is a child, he behaves like a child, and it is wonderful. When he becomes an adult and he behaves like a child that is retarded life. So there is no hurry for a child to become an adult.
A Simple Experiment for Parents
If we really want to bring up our children well, first we must see if we can do something with ourselves. Everybody who wishes to be a parent must do one simple experiment. Let them sit down and see what is it that is not okay in their lives and what would be good for their lives – not about the world outside, but about themselves. Let them see if they can manifest that in the next three months. Something about yourself – your own behavior, speech, modes of action, and habits – if you can alter that in three months, then you would handle your child also with wisdom. Otherwise you will go by some silly consultancy from somebody else. There is no consultancy. It takes observation of a particular child as to what should be done and what should not be done with that particular child. You cannot do the same things with every child because each child is unique.”
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