Bring Back The Child’s Confidence

Children always fascinates me. Most of the time when I forget the true inborn quality of human, I just have to look at little children. They are cheerful, full of curiosity, expressive, loud, innocence and fearless. They don’t have much worries and fears like adults. But unfortunately, I meet many parents, out of their ignorance, transmit their worries and fears to their kids and these little children can start to have worries and fears as early as the age of 3. In addition to that, it’s very common that the society want them not to make mistakes. While making mistakes is actually an important process to grow. 

Every weekend, I teach my neighbor’s little daughter to read and write for one and half hour. She’s six years old. She’s so timid, shy and very quiet. In our first meetings, I needed to put extra efforts to just to communicate with her. Whenever I asked a question, she responded by nodding or shrugging. When she found difficulties in writing a word, she would just sit and stared at her paper blankly for a long time. When we tried to read a word together, I could only hear her whisper. But when I asked her to repeat after me, she would just move her lips without any sound.

It really put my patience to test. But actually it didn’t surprise me to see her like this. Her parents, being less fortunate and uneducated, almost have no time to educate her at home and to chitchat with her daily. Her mother works from morning till afternoon as a maid. And her father works as a construction worker. Both of them busy make a living for the whole family. And I found that she often got snapped when she asked too many questions or when she made mistakes.

Knowing this, couple of weeks ago, I tried to create a game for her. We called it ABC game. She would choose any letters and then together we tried to write a simple word that begins with that letter. She smiled a lot and started to make a sound. I even asked her to clap her hands with me whenever we spell a word. During the session, I also asked her many things just to create a more personal connection. I asked about her favorite color, favorite food, and the name of her best friend at school and even about the dream she had the night before. Luckily she found this amusing.