Raising a child who wins easily
I didn't write this post for a few weeks, because I wasn't sure if it would come off in a similar vein as #firstworldproblems, a sort of condescending #blessed post, one that is a thinly disguised braggart post, which is really not my intention. I am genuinely concerned about how to emotionally nurture and raise a child like Erika.
In the fall, Erika entered the Brickfest Lego building competition with a classmate. They spent two playdates together for a total of maybe two hours of constructing and three hours of playing with non-Legos, and the final product that they made, a celebration of 100 days in school, a mesh of bright colors and Shopkins creatures, ended up winning first place in the Kindergarten category. There are about 60 Kindergarteners in her school. Her photo was taken and she was featured in the local newspaper, and her model was displayed in the school's hallway for a month.
In the spring, there was Dr. Seuss art contest, where students were tasked with drawing a wacky or funny comic strip, imagining what would happen if Thing 1 and Thing 2 were to come to their house. We forgot all about the contest, until the night before the contest deadline, so I threw a blank sheet of paper at her, she sat down and did a quick sketch with some color pencils, and next thing we know; she won first place in the art contest. She won $20 credit at the next book fair, and was again featured in the newspaper.
She has won two math contests in her class. In fact, because she's already mastered addition and subtraction in class, and is now moving on to the concept of multiplication and negative numbers, she ends up spending her time in math class doodling math equations and writing out new math problems for her 2-year old sister Amelia to solve. Her teacher has a habit of having them engage in a head-to-head contest, where the twenty students in Erika's class form up in two lines, and they have to solve math problems in a rotational-style head-to-head combat, much like Family Feud style. And when her peers see her move to the front of the line, the opposing line ends up scrambling out of position, as no one wants to face off against Erika any more.
Erika's one struggle, which I wrote about last year, is Chinese. I am not a native speaker and it is awkward on my tongue. We do not speak it at home, though I am trying harder to do so with her younger sister, Amelia. Because everything else in Erika's life has come very easily to her thus far, and Chinese was something difficult, she had a very hard time coping with the notion that she was not good at something, and because of this, she fought the idea of going to Chinese school for a very long time. It broke my heart, to see her so upset, so unwilling to try.
This is her second year attending Chinese school. She goes on Saturdays for 4 hours, and three weeks ago, there was a Word Recognition contest. In Erika's Kindergarten class, they were tasked with recognizing 30 different Chinese character sounds (a Chinese alphabet of sort). In the higher grades, they had actual words to read. In her class of 10 students, she scored 27 out of 30, easily taking first place (2nd place was 24/30 and third place was 20/30). She will be getting a trophy at the end of the school year for her achievement.
And I am so proud of her accomplishment and I'm so happy to see how far she has come with her Chinese. But when we left school that day and I hugged her and told her how proud I was of her hard work, she gave a little shrug and there was a sense of expectancy to win, a notion that her hard work should always be rewarded with a win, since that is how it has always worked for her. In fact, most of the time, she is rewarded for not ever having tried (something she says--- like the art contest, she says "I just drew something I thought was funny, it wasn't hard") and I fear that as life gets harder, and life throws her more curveballs, she will not be equipped to hanlde the disappointments in life. Because right now, everything comes so easily to Erika. She has the perfect smile and a sweet personality; she makes friends easily and she stands up to bullies; she does well in school, whether it be mathematics or reading or gym class. And maybe I should celebrate that right now, the way she wins at every contest, the way victories come easily to her and not her peers, but I worry that I am not preparing her for the real world. That when she falls, and she will fall some day, she will not know how to get back up.
In the fall, Erika entered the Brickfest Lego building competition with a classmate. They spent two playdates together for a total of maybe two hours of constructing and three hours of playing with non-Legos, and the final product that they made, a celebration of 100 days in school, a mesh of bright colors and Shopkins creatures, ended up winning first place in the Kindergarten category. There are about 60 Kindergarteners in her school. Her photo was taken and she was featured in the local newspaper, and her model was displayed in the school's hallway for a month.
In the spring, there was Dr. Seuss art contest, where students were tasked with drawing a wacky or funny comic strip, imagining what would happen if Thing 1 and Thing 2 were to come to their house. We forgot all about the contest, until the night before the contest deadline, so I threw a blank sheet of paper at her, she sat down and did a quick sketch with some color pencils, and next thing we know; she won first place in the art contest. She won $20 credit at the next book fair, and was again featured in the newspaper.
She has won two math contests in her class. In fact, because she's already mastered addition and subtraction in class, and is now moving on to the concept of multiplication and negative numbers, she ends up spending her time in math class doodling math equations and writing out new math problems for her 2-year old sister Amelia to solve. Her teacher has a habit of having them engage in a head-to-head contest, where the twenty students in Erika's class form up in two lines, and they have to solve math problems in a rotational-style head-to-head combat, much like Family Feud style. And when her peers see her move to the front of the line, the opposing line ends up scrambling out of position, as no one wants to face off against Erika any more.
Erika's one struggle, which I wrote about last year, is Chinese. I am not a native speaker and it is awkward on my tongue. We do not speak it at home, though I am trying harder to do so with her younger sister, Amelia. Because everything else in Erika's life has come very easily to her thus far, and Chinese was something difficult, she had a very hard time coping with the notion that she was not good at something, and because of this, she fought the idea of going to Chinese school for a very long time. It broke my heart, to see her so upset, so unwilling to try.
This is her second year attending Chinese school. She goes on Saturdays for 4 hours, and three weeks ago, there was a Word Recognition contest. In Erika's Kindergarten class, they were tasked with recognizing 30 different Chinese character sounds (a Chinese alphabet of sort). In the higher grades, they had actual words to read. In her class of 10 students, she scored 27 out of 30, easily taking first place (2nd place was 24/30 and third place was 20/30). She will be getting a trophy at the end of the school year for her achievement.
And I am so proud of her accomplishment and I'm so happy to see how far she has come with her Chinese. But when we left school that day and I hugged her and told her how proud I was of her hard work, she gave a little shrug and there was a sense of expectancy to win, a notion that her hard work should always be rewarded with a win, since that is how it has always worked for her. In fact, most of the time, she is rewarded for not ever having tried (something she says--- like the art contest, she says "I just drew something I thought was funny, it wasn't hard") and I fear that as life gets harder, and life throws her more curveballs, she will not be equipped to hanlde the disappointments in life. Because right now, everything comes so easily to Erika. She has the perfect smile and a sweet personality; she makes friends easily and she stands up to bullies; she does well in school, whether it be mathematics or reading or gym class. And maybe I should celebrate that right now, the way she wins at every contest, the way victories come easily to her and not her peers, but I worry that I am not preparing her for the real world. That when she falls, and she will fall some day, she will not know how to get back up.