Fear is the second enemy of parenting -part 2 (comparing)

I dont know if it’s just me, but It’s always drive me crazy when I saw other kid at the same age with Fab, can do certain skill that Fab has not mastered yet. The worst when it come with reading and writing, the most unappealling skill for Fab. Even a 4 years old daugther of my friend has mastered it from her school activities, while I’ve tried everything for Fab until now at his 6th. Montessorri ways, flash card, labelling our things at home, mix reading with physical activities, extralesson on reading and all other ways that I can think of or read. It’s useless, I can not make reading a fun thing to be learned and I really don’t want to force him to do it because it can kill his interest for reading. He will hate reading and that is the last thing I want to be happened.

It is not happened only with reading, parents do compare their child for how he talk, behave, draw, and everything else. Maybe it is our nature to see the weakness of our child, and focus on it. So when we see other can do it, we can spot it easily and we afraid that we have done something wrong. We rarely gave compliment for other skills that he has mastered because we take it for granted.

Fear is the second enemy of parenting part1

Fear cam be in several form, the first one is Avoid any accident

Don’t run! Don’t touch that pan! Don’t play with that dirty thing! Be carefull! — Have you ever count how many times do you say those statement to your child? Suddenly, a mom has turn to be a security officer, constantly in alert condition and must have an eagle eye to look for any danger that come near. Sometime we are so paranoid with the small things.

It is a default reflect for a mom or dad to protect her/his kid by avoiding problems. However, according to brain study, what the parent do is actually prevent a learning to happen. Tony Buzan explain in his book Child Brain, that a child is learning by Trial, Event, Feedback, Check, Adjust, Check (TEFCAS). When you tell your child not to run, he actually do not learn that running might be danger. Until he felt the hurt of bruise, he actually did not learn the true consequence of running, except your scream. Maybe that’s why we often say “How many times do I have to told you not to…”, “Dont you ever learn that…. Is danger?”