Monday 4 September 2006

Fear of Failure

Half way though our first day back at home education. Sam, of course is away to real school. Jude has been quietly getting on with her reading. Today she has a piano lesson. She hasn't practiced all summer long. I don't mind really, she's been having fun. But today she sat at the piano and couldn't remember how the piece went. I played it to her on the flute, but explained that I didn't know how the piece went either, but I was reading the notes and playing what I read. I tried to get her to do the same. Jude has an immense fear of failure. Reading the book, How Children Fail, I now understand and see this more. She will not have a go at playing a piece by sight reading it. Instead, she memorizes each line of the music, and plays it from memory without looking at the book at all. What a difficult way to play the piano. I tried to encourage her to try to sight read it. I said to her, it doesn't matter how bad it sounds, how many mistakes you make, it can sound really dreadful, but at least try to look at the music and play what you read. Instead, she burst into tears and ran off to her room. Her fear of failing is so immense that she won't even try. I am at a loss as to what to do about it. Other than encouraging her to try, what else can I do? She can't complete all her grades in piano by memory. And she does love to play the piano, she is not forced to do it. I notice she is the same in maths. If you try to explain something, and she doesn't understand it, she cries and gets so terribly upset. No matter how much I explain to her that it doesn't matter if she can't do it, if she doesn't understand or if she makes a mistake, it doesn't change her behaviour. At school the teachers told me she was very bright, but she took so much longer than everyone else to complete her work, because she was so afraid of making a mistake. Ah, what am I to do?

3 comments:

  1. you should carry on doing what you have been doing . an excellent job with our kids. keep up the good work I am so proud of you

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  2. The only stuff I could find on the net basically says what you probably already know. That it usually develops from something that's happened, like having experienced a failure where they were ridiculed and developing a fear of it. Maybe when Jude was at school cos I know she had some bad teachers?

    Does she know that she is like that? If not maybe you could talk to her about it and help her to understand what she is like so she can learn to try and change it.

    Only other things I can find say that the best cure is to be in the kind of environment she is in, loving and nurturing where she's free to learn and get things wrong and she'll change over time.

    The last thing it seems to be saying is that we need to help kids to fail in small situations so they can learn that failure is part of life and they can learn from it and get better. Without being exposed to failure they will never reach their full potential and need to understand it makes them less likely to fail and be better at things in the future.

    Not very helpful I'm afraid but I tried to find out!

    Maddi

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  3. She must have inhereited it from her aunty hannah. She is a perfectionist like me, at school if I felt I couldn't do a task perfectly, e.g an essay, Id avoid it and find ways to not start it and once I did it would take forever cos it had to be perfect. I was always getting into trouble for not having my work in on time. It's a terrible way to be. That's why I did so well in my QCSE's cos i felt I had to be perfect, but it can make your life a misery in the process. I think being around people who don't care about those things helped me to lighten up too. So mums and maddis ideas would probably be good.

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