When Helping May Not Be So Helpful

I grew up always being the idealistic one in my family.  And every now and then, I would suddenly have a light-bulb moment.  Whenever a creative idea comes to mind, I literally feel the passion surge through my veins as I turn into hyper-focus mode and day dream about it, analyze through it, and research on it.  As a young child, however, moments like these were often met with suggestions that would make me feel that I was either too young or lacked the skill or experience to realize these dreams.

As I was driving on my way to pick up Tweetie Pie from school today, I thought about how I spent so much of my life shying away from the process of fulfilling such dreams because I felt so small against what seemed to me were the giant obstacles I needed to hurdle.

Suddenly, I remembered a book that I loved to read to TP when she was a little girl:  The Carrot Seed by Ruth Krauss.  It's about a little boy who planted a carrot seed but was consistently warned by his family that the plant wouldn't grow.  Despite all they said, he continued to water the plant everyday and pull up the weeds around it -- until one day, the plant did grow just the way he always believed it would.

I read this book a hundred times before upon TP's repetitive request.  But somehow, it was only today that it came back to me with new meaning:  This book is about a boy so small and yet had a big dream. He started working on it all with just a tiny seed and patiently nurtured it day by day by day, not letting anyone or anything intimidate him.

My little Tweetie Pie looooooves doing art.  Every single day, we have many drawings and paintings to sort and pack away.  Over a  month ago, a student in her school organized an Ecology Art Contest.  For the lower school (Prep to Grade 2), students who wanted to participate in the contest were asked to submit an artwork that expressed how they can help save the earth.

When I saw the announcement, I immediately thought about how TP would definitely want to participate in this contest.  True enough, she came down from her classroom excitedly telling me about the announcement the students made in their classroom about it, followed immediately with the words, "I want to join!"

I immediately replied, "Sure, why not?" with my big, encouraging smile and hug.... And yet there was this other part of me that worried about her entry not being good enough. (Shame on me.)

And just like the little girl that I was, my dear TP immediately proceeded to work on her entry as soon as we got home that day.  Not long after, she came back to me with her work of art saying, "Done!"

This is the artwork that she submitted.

I looked at her work and loved the creative concept of putting all her DOs and DON'Ts inside the planet earth!  But I have to admit that the Claire Dunphy in me who could not understand what she drew inside that planet was soooo tempted to make suggestions (okay, maybe I mean to help!) and improve on it.  Although it took quite an internal struggle for me, I bit my lip and held back on helping her since, after all, it would maker her much more proud of herself to be able to say she did it all on her own.

Today, I arrived at her school and met an excited Tweetie Pie who was proudly declaring, "Mama!  I won 2nd prize in the contest!!!" 

Boy, am I glad that I shushed that micromanaging mom in me!  Now TP can truly be proud because she did it all by herself.  At the end of it all, it really isn't about whether or not she wins anything....  It's really about how much of her own best effort she put into it and can say that she gave her work all she could.

My prayer is that my children will grow up believing in their dreams and doing whatever it takes to turn it to reality, undaunted by obstacles that come their way -- just like that little boy who planted a carrot seed.

Perfect Parenting?

I have a bright and bubbly six-year-old daughter whom I love to call Tweetie Pie (TP).  Her mind is constantly creating ideas on arts and crafts projects, stories to publish, and play scripts to put to life.  It's like she has, what I would call, a "light-bulb moment" almost every five to ten minutes.  It's wonderful to see how she could come up with so many wonderful ideas.  The challenge though with having such a speedy, creative mind is that one also tends to expect the implementation of these ideas to catch up with one's thoughts at the same speed.

My little TP sees a vision in her mind, quickly acts on it, and expects to have perfect results after giving it just one shot.  At the end, when she sees that what she produced turned out to be a far cry from what she envisioned, she breaks down and cries -- so much so that she will end up resigning to the idea that she is terrible at such a task and give it up altogether.

One concrete example that happened recently is when she was inspired to draw a picture of a room with a flower by the window sill and a chair beside it.  She drew something similar to this:

To our surprise, she suddenly broke down, cried, and started kicking on the floor because "it doesn't look like a chair!  I can't get it to look realistic!"

Why?  What could cause her to be so hard on herself?  This is something I have asked myself as we struggled with this concern, particularly the past two years.  However, I didn't really have to go far to find the answer to this.  The answer lies in me...

As I look into my own life, I realize that I myself have given up too easily on acting on my ideas because of immediate and high expectations I put on myself and being afraid to fail in meeting them.  Perhaps my little TP got this from me through my genes.  Perhaps she picked it up from my not-so-positive outlook in life and from the way I respond to her.

Whether it's by nature or nurture, my earnest hope is that my TP will continue to value her ideas and explore them.  But even beyond that, my hope is that she will patiently and persistently work out her plan and be forgiving of herself when she fails and love herself enough to pick herself up, learn, and try again.

The only way I can teach her to do this is to do the same for myself.  We parents can only be effective as teachers of our children when we truly live out the values we wish to impart to them.

That night, when she broke down over her "failed" drawing of a chair, I initially dealt with the situation the way I always did -- by simply telling her how she shouldn't be so hard on herself and that she shouldn't be afraid to make mistakes. And since I had repeatedly done this for several months already, it had grown to a point that she could sense the frustration in my tone of voice.  But that's exactly all I would do -- just tell her -- and then go back to whatever I was doing.  I expected her to just be able to "get it" by listening to my explanation and then move on.

It suddenly dawned on me: How can I expect her to be patient and forgiving to herself if she can't feel her own parents being patient and forgiving towards her?

And so for a change, I stopped what I was doing and cuddled her in my arms to calm her down.  Then I went to her room to get her own little wooden chair and placed it in front of her.  I patiently went through every part of the chair, line by line,  corner by corner, to help her observe and figure out how to translate this 3-D object into a two dimensional drawing.  Every now and then, she had to erase and repeat certain lines -- and I made it a point to be patient and let her know that it was absolutely okay and that she could try again.  Finally, with only my verbal guidance but with my constant presence beside her, she was able to come out with this:

It was such a joy to see her so proud of herself.  Proud, not because she was some naturally gifted artist who did a great drawing -- but because she gave herself time to work on it, erase when not, right, and try again and again and again until she finished.  Aaahhh...  THIS is what our children should be learning.

It's not about how wonderful or perfect their work is but how much heart and effort they put into it.  THAT's what I want my TP to learn.  And that means THAT is also what I must learn....

Recently, TP suddenly asked me, "Mama, what's your New Year's resolution this year as a parent?"

Gulp.  Say what? (Darling TP always comes up with such surprising questions!)  I actually began year 2012 without any specific resolutions.

But suddenly it came to me so clearly that I replied to my her:

"My New Year's resolution is to be patient, persistent, forgiving, and loving to you
[and to myself!] 

so that you may also grow up to be patient, persistent, forgiving, and loving to yourself."