I did relatively well in school; not an A student … more of a B. Many I know suffered getting an F in one thing or another. It was devastating and often it wasn’t a one-off grade … the more they got Ds and Fs, the more they got Ds and Fs! When this happens with consistency a child has, without their realizing it, developed a deep-seated limiting or negative belief. It is strong and always ‘operational.’
In college, my boyfriend taught me how to play chess. We sat in our favorite coffee shop several nights a week; it was really fun. At first, he beat me soundly, which had me try again. I began to get better over a few weeks, yet I was still losing; not as much as before.
Then came the day when I BEAT HIM! And then I did it AGAIN! And then he said, “Now you need to find a player better than you or me to continue learning.”
When my children were little, I played a lot of racquetball. One court at the club was for kids to play … and so I did. I got quite good … B-level women’s and C-level men’s. I lost a lot of matches. I got hit in the back of the legs more than once because I didn’t get out of the way. I learned.
I was disappointed to lose, however, it inspired me to make a change in ‘how’ I managed ‘getting out of the way,’ as an example …. FASTER of course.
All of this is to say that imagine IF we were taught at a young age that “failure IS the fastest path to learning!!” We would never have developed those limiting beliefs. Oh, we’d have others of course, but these dig deeply into potential confidence in our children. It sticks for years and years.
When we purposely change failure to learning consciously it is a start; that one step. The challenge can become that creating a new belief in our ability and deserve-ability takes time … real-time, persistence, and focus.
We believed the F was a bad thing and did for years and years. It doesn’t take years and years to create the opposite belief in ourselves and our ability, yet there is no magic fix.
Any new belief that we want for ourselves (results are always an exact reflection of what we believe) takes a minimum of ninety days following a specific and straightforward process, used and proven over the last ten years in my work.
As parents, grandparents, sisters, brothers, aunts, uncles, friends, and neighbors, WE can change this one child at a time by not commiserating with a child who ‘failed’ … by lifting them up and inspiring them to get better. Do this every time you are with a child and their lives will be better thanks to YOU.
One of the saddest facts about bad grades, Leslie, is that if you do network analysis on students and ask them who their friends are, you will find that for many students, hanging out with their friend group is so important that if your most important friend is a bad student, they influence their friends group to be bad students as well.
The A students will hang out with other A students and the D students with the other D students – even if many in the D/C/B group would have potential to become A students as well. But they fear being ostracized if they become “too bookish” and then may have nobody else to hang out with.
It is important for educators to not only look at how the students can do academically but also what their social safety net is if they should grow out of their peer group.