3 Ways To Challenge Your Children

A few months ago, Jim and I had to make a quick run to Sam’s Club.  While we were gone, a goat (Zipporah) unexpectedly went into labor and Emery (age 12) had to deliver his first baby goat with his older siblings cheering him on (and Mom on speaker phone giving him directions).  

Emery and Galaxy

Despite his fear, Emery was able to rise to the challenge.  This got me thinking about how my children are able to handle whatever is thrown at them.  When I thought about why that is, I realized that we’ve never made things intentionally easy for them or put them in situations where they can only succeed.

Instead, we’re constantly challenging the children.  I think this is a better way to build a child’s self-esteem because it teaches them to be capable.  Challenging them shows them how much they can do and what an asset they are to the family.  This gives them a real sense of self worth that nobody can take away.

We regularly practice the following concepts with each child:

1. Push them past their comfort zones.  Nobody knows your child better than you.  What is easy for one of my children is very scary or a real stretch for another child.  I tailor the tasks I give the children so that they aren’t always what they are comfortable with.  For example, Brett is great at answering the phone and answering questions, but she hates taking the initiative and making phone calls.  So I regularly ask her to schedule appointments or order the occasional pizza or contact a customer. 

2. Set them up to possibly fail.  It is extremely important for children to learn how to fail.  They’re not perfect and once they are out of your home, they’re going to find situations in which they don’t excel.  I’d much rather my children learn how to deal with failure in my home, where we can talk things out and help them to understand that failing is a part of life.  Brett got a fortune cookie the other day that I liked.  It said, “You may be disappointed if you fail, but you are doomed if you don’t try.”  

I regularly ask the children to make a meal they’ve never made before.  Quite often they get it exactly right and dinner or dessert is wonderful.  But there have been times that it was a complete disaster.  For example, years ago I asked Colter to make Amish friendship bread.  When we ate it, we all started choking.  After some investigating, we discovered that he had used the baking soda bin instead of the sugar bin.  While he failed in that particular instance, he internalized a valuable lesson.  Failing and losing a dessert he was looking forward to eating was a better learning tool than me lecturing him to always double check his ingredients.

3. Expect them to try (not succeed).  With my children, I work hard to stress the fact that they will never get in trouble if they don’t succeed at something.  They will get in trouble if they don’t try with an earnest effort.  When they try and fail, we commiserate with the failure, but we praise them for putting in the effort.  For example, Jim regularly asks Hewitt (8 years old) to help empty the Hulk of all the feed sacks.  Hewitt isn’t capable of carrying 50 pound bags of feed the way Colter is, but Hewitt can drag them.  Even if all Hewitt does is move one bag of feed while Colter moves ten, we expect him to do what he can do.  Then we thank him for helping to get the job done.

I do have to point out that because I’m constantly challenging my children and pushing them to do new things, they aren’t always pleased with me.  It’s a lot easier for them to stick to their comfort zone and do just the things that they’re good at.  It does take extra parenting energy to challenge them.  But parenting isn’t about doing what is easy for your children (or for you).  It’s about what is going to make each of your individual children grow up to be the best person they can possibly be.

What about you?  Do you challenge your children?  I’d love to hear some examples!

PJ

 

 

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3 thoughts on “3 Ways To Challenge Your Children

  1. What valuable lessons your children learn while still being children! I am so annoyed with a society where kids are taught that keeping score isn’t a part of the game and everyone wins. Here is a harsh reality: Successful people do keep score! While raising our kids, we played games (just as my parents did with their children). Occasionally the kid would win but the game was never ‘thrown’ to them. They learned the value of trying and when they did win, it was a bigger victory than if we had let them win.

    BTW – I totally relate to Brett; I am not a phone person!

    • That will make Brett feel vindicated. LOL I agree with you – not everyone is successful with what they choose to do. It takes a lot to become successful! PJ

  2. We adopted all six of our children but the last two were the most challenging because not only did they not speak English, they were brothers ages 12 & 16. I flew to Turkey to finalize the adoptions the end of August 2004 and returned to SC with the boys in tow Sep 10th. Their schooling began the next morning.

    They each had to memorize two pages of vocabulary from the Charlie Brown Picture Dictionary each day in addition to beginning their own vocabulary books with lots and lots of action verbs, describing adjectives & adverbs and most of the prepositions. Then after a few weeks of that, we began learning all the phonetic sounds.

    The 12-yr old, Peter, made a game of learning but everything was difficult for 16-yr old Paul. I was using different methods to teach English than his Turkish school used & he thought I was wrong. Finally by Thanksgiving, I told them they could no longer speak Turkish downstairs. They could speak Turkish as they prepared for the day & as they prepared for bed.

    We had given them New Testaments in their native language which they read each morning/night. Well, Paul rebelled completely regarding not speaking Turkish downstairs though he had already had a year of English in Turkish schools. Then I devised a game – I gave each of them a roll of nickels each morning & instructed them that they would have to pay a nickel to the other brother for each Turkish word spoken.

    Peter loved the game and “earned” most of his brother’s nickels that first week. They were each surprised at how much English they really had learned. By February, I felt they were ready to begin Sonlight’s grade 3/4 American History/American Literature. We read all the books aloud with my translating many, many words. By August, we had completed the curriculum and they were fluent enough to begin a group homeschool on grade level. We continued to encounter “absolute roadblocks”, but we insisted that they push forward as best they could.

    Paul now has his masters degree in Teaching English as a Second Language and teaches in VA. Peter graduated from public high schoolwork with a 4.0 GPA, earning a full scholarship to college.

    I too believe it is beneficial to push kids beyond their comfort zone. I could tell you more stories.

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