It takes skill and grace to walk along side kids and teach them about the world, without tripping or falling behind or walking too fast. Instigating self doubt.
I personally have carried a heavy burden as a kid. I beat myself up with this self reflection: “I should have known this.” I found healing only as an adult, after living in a different culture for a few years. It is not the culture that helped me find healing, but a certain type of onboarding training at Apple. First of all, I realized I could relax a bit more in my own skin; I am plenty self aware and I know lots of things. Then, admitting what you don’t know is the first step towards wisdom and gaining trust. Our mantra was: “I don’t know. Let’s find out.” And it was a brilliant approach. Nobody knows everything. And it is vertex to give an accurate solution than to appear smart. That experience it healed the kid in me. It gave me self-confidence and it helped me grow tremendously.
We are appalled at how many common sense things our kids ignore. And we explain some stuff. And we repeat others. Many times over. And then we get frustrated and ask : “what the heck!”
This morning on our drive to school I told Jackie about my “I should have known” childhood burden. She looked at me funny and said: “why is this question heavy? I don’t worry about what I should know.”
Now it all makes sense…
Indeed, my kids don’t live with the burden of “should”. And if they discover the love for learning and find intrinsic motivations for doing all the stuff, they will be better off. They’ll find something else to burden them, I’m sure.