Facing the Reality

Olivia wrote a letter to Daddy the other night which said:

"Dear Dad, I am not having fun. I am not having fun at school. Isabelle is taking all my friends. And I feel bad. Now I have one friend and it is Justin. And I know how I feel and I know you don't know how I feel. Love,

Your angel (how sweetJ)"

I have heard the same story from Olivia before. She is used to be surrounded by a bunch of friends but now she would come home occasionally complaining that she lost all her friends to Isabelle and had the worst day of her life as everyone went to play with Isabelle and her "gang". She was upset about the situation and even referred Isabelle as "my devil" once.

Even though I bet those were just some "bad" days she had, I can still see how the situation had hurt her feelings. We told her that just because her friends all went to play with Isabelle doesn't mean her friends "betrayed" her as most of the time they would still play with her. As long as she is nice to her friends, her friends will want to play with her again.  Daddy has also suggested to her really trying to be good friend with Isabelle which she has.

To be honest, compared to getting my children to eat healthy food, helping my children to feel good about themselves and deal with "tough" situations like this is always challenging to me. 

I recall from my own childhood, with my mom working in a different city and dad totally dedicated to his career, I learned to deal with all the emotional issues and growing pains by myself. I did this mostly passively which means I would feel bad for a little while (normally not over a day) and forget about it. I don't know how much my personality was affected by this but knowing what I had missed, I know from the very beginning that I want to be there for my kids when they have emotional problems. I want to be their friends whom they can talk about things and share their feelings, and most importantly I want to be their mentor and be able to give them positive advice when needed. This itself is not an easy task, but on the other hand, I don't want to go to the other extreme either.

Growing up in China as a kid during my time, I didn't get a lot of positive feedback or praise from my parents (I got those mostly from my teachers) like the kids get now in the US. We know constant encouragement and reassurance from loved ones boost children's self-esteem. We see most of the kids grown up in American are very confident and feeling good about themselves which is definitely a good thing. But sometimes I wonder, for children growing up surrounded by praises and encouragements, are they emotionally strong enough when they must deal with a true failure? Can they face the reality and accept it? Will the emotional shock be too hard for them to handle and make them see themselves totally different?

So I think while it is important for us to help our children feel better in dealing with tough situations, it is also important (especially when the kids are little older) for us to teach them the concept that sometimes life is just not fair. They sometimes have to accept reality, which may not be what they want to hear, and learn to deal with it. And sometimes we may even need to purposely let them "fall into the pit" so that they can learn their hard lessons on their own.   

It is always a balance.

The following is an article forwarded by my friend about 11 things we won’t learn from school by Bill Gates which I would like to share with my children one day.

11 Things You Won’t Learn from Schoo1

Bill Gates recently gave a speech at a High School about 11 things they did not and will not learn in school. He talks about how feel-good, politically correct teachings created a generation of kids with no concept of reality and how this concept set them up for failure in the real world.   

Rule 1: Life is not fair - get used to it!

Rule 2: The world won't care about your self-esteem. The world will expect you to accomplish something BEFORE you feel good about yourself.

Rule 3: You will NOT make $60,000 a year right out of high school. You won't be a vice-president with a car phone until you earn both.

Rule 4: If you think your teacher is tough, wait till you get a boss.

Rule 5: Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your Grandparents had a different word for burger flipping: they called it opportunity.

Rule 6: If you mess up, it's not your parents' fault, so don't whine about your mistakes, learn from them.

Rule 7: Before you were born, your parents weren't as boring as they are now. They got that way from paying your bills, cleaning your clothes and listening to you talk about how cool you thought you were. So before you save the rain forest from the parasites of your parent's generation, try delousing t he closet in your own room.

Rule 8: Your school may have done away with winners and losers, but life HAS NOT. In some schools, they have abolished failing grades and they'll give you as MANY TIMES as you want to get the right answer. This doesn't bear the slightest resemblance to ANYTHING in real life.

Rule 9: Life is not divided into semesters. You don't get summers off and very few employers are interested in helping you FIND YOURSELF. Do that on your own time.

Rule 10: Television is NOT real life. In real life people actually have to leave the coffee shop and go to jobs.

Rule 11: Be nice to nerds. Chances are you'll end up working for one.