“In fact, we might say that progress and practice are synonyms. You can’t have the former without the latter. And the latter is worthless without the former.”
- Ryan Holiday
What do we want for our children? Whether they are our students or part of our family, I think we want our children to find their own success, feel accomplished, and find joy in life. There are many little components that make up those 3 ideas, and yes, you could probably add some more things to the list.
To me, finding their own success and feeling accomplished will bring joy with it. But the road to success and the path to feeling accomplished can be perilous.
There are few paths to success that don’t require work. While some kids pick up a work ethic earlier in life, others take a more circuitous path. In the end, we know that success and accomplishment only come from putting in the work. Anything else is a flash in the pan, and those flashes don’t burn for a long time.
I work as a speech/language therapist and part of the work is helping children to develop clear speech. While some speech differences get fixed up quickly, others can be long-lasting. In many of those cases, the speech doesn’t get better because the child didn’t practice.
Soccer practice happened, piano lessons happened, the math tutor made it over, and we got to go out to dinner on the weekend. But the speech work didn’t get practiced. We can make the argument that each one of those things is important in it’s own right. On the other hand, we can also make the point about priorities. What’s more important? Some TV time after school, or spending time on the speech work?
The harsh reality is that we do our children no favors by shielding them from work. We need to model hard work and praise taking initiative on hard work.
Without that base of hard work, success and accomplishment will stay just out of reach, and with it the joy that comes from a life fulfilled.
