![\"Student](\"http:\/\/commons.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/File:Student_teacher_in_China.jpg\" "\\"Student")
<\/a><\/p>\nPicture this. Your child comes home with a special assignment from school. He\u2019s very excited about it and puts in a lot of time to perfect it. He\u2019s thrilled with the result and can\u2019t wait to take it to school.<\/p>\n
A few days later, he comes through the door, picks a fight with a younger sibling and bursts into tears. Finally, he manages to tell you that the project he was so proud of was \u2018unacceptable,\u2019 that the teacher wants him to do it over.<\/p>\n
Here’s\u00a0a one-question quiz for parents: what\u2019s your first reaction?<\/p>\n
a) Protective – \u201cI\u2019ll straighten this out.\u201d
\nb) Embarrassed – \u201cMY son always gets good grades.\u201d
\nc) Angry – \u201cThat teacher is picking on my son!\u201d
\nd) Worried – \u201cThis could be damaging to his self esteem.\u201d
\ne) Grateful- \u201cHe\u2019s got someone who\u2019s really going to push him to reach his potential this year.\u201d<\/p>\n
I think that lots of parents want<\/em> to believe that \u2018e\u2019 is the right answer\u2026. I just remember wishing that it wasn\u2019t so difficult to stifle all of the other reactions on my way to that answer! Sometimes the urge to protect goes a bit too far.<\/p>\n [Tweet “Sometimes the urge to protect goes a bit too far.”]<\/p>\n As parents, it\u2019s not our job to see that our children never experience sadness, disappointment or frustration. As much as most of us would like to, we\u2019re probably not going to be able to keep those things out of their lives \u2014 now OR when they become adults. But, we can do the next best thing.<\/p>\n We can invest the time that it takes to prepare them to face life\u2019s struggles.<\/p>\n [Tweet “How do we prepare kids to face life\u2019s struggles?”]<\/p>\n Instead of trying to shield our kids from \u2018negativity\u2019 let\u2019s help them embrace tough situations. Why not use the bumps provided by the classroom or the playground to build the strengths they\u2019ll need when applying for a job or surviving an unhappy supervisor?<\/p>\n Isn\u2019t that real learning?<\/p>\n Picture this. Your child comes home with a special assignment from school. He\u2019s very excited about it and puts in a lot of time to perfect it. He\u2019s thrilled with the result and can\u2019t wait to take it to school. A few days later, he comes through the door, picks a fight with a younger sibling and bursts into tears. Finally, he manages to tell you that the project he was so proud of was \u2018unacceptable,\u2019 that the teacher wants him to do it over. Here’s\u00a0a one-question quiz for parents: what\u2019s your first reaction? a) Protective – \u201cI\u2019ll straighten this out.\u201d b) Embarrassed – \u201cMY son always gets good grades.\u201d c) Angry – \u201cThat teacher is picking on my son!\u201d d) Worried – \u201cThis could be damaging to his self esteem.\u201d e) Grateful- \u201cHe\u2019s got someone who\u2019s really going to push him to reach his potential this year.\u201d I think that lots of parents want to believe that \u2018e\u2019 is the right answer\u2026. I just remember wishing that it wasn\u2019t so difficult to stifle all of the other reactions on my way to that answer! Sometimes the urge to protect goes a bit too far. [Tweet “Sometimes the urge to protect goes a bit too far.”] As parents, it\u2019s not our job to see that our children never experience sadness, disappointment or frustration. As much as most of us would like to, we\u2019re probably not going to be able to keep those things out of their lives \u2014 now OR when they become adults. But, we can do the next best thing. We can invest the time that it takes to prepare them to face life\u2019s struggles. [Tweet “How do we prepare kids to face life\u2019s struggles?”] Instead of trying to shield our kids from \u2018negativity\u2019 let\u2019s help them embrace tough situations. Why not use the bumps provided by the classroom or the playground to build the strengths they\u2019ll need when applying for a job or surviving an unhappy supervisor? Isn\u2019t that real learning?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,5],"tags":[298,377,423,465,480,531],"post_folder":[],"class_list":["post-119","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-e","category-parenting","tag-learning","tag-parenting","tag-protective","tag-school","tag-sibling","tag-teacher"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreapatten.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreapatten.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreapatten.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreapatten.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreapatten.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=119"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreapatten.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreapatten.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=119"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreapatten.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=119"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreapatten.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=119"},{"taxonomy":"post_folder","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreapatten.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/post_folder?post=119"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"