A Vital Question Every Parent (and Teacher) Needs to Answer.
And why modern life makes it necessary to do so.
Every parent faces this dilemma.
“Should my child specialise in an area or interest from a young age, or should I encourage them to try many activities?”
It’s a great question to ask as the ramifications, as you’ll read below, are so important.
Specialist or generalist? What should I encourage my child to be?
The fact that most sports and interests cater to kids from a very young age and structure activities to keep them engaged for the long term makes this decision even more difficult.
And life today is competitive. Starting activities early and getting an edge over other kids is a common school of thought. But from a development perspective, it’s not a wise option.
Childhood is a time of exploration and generalisation. Before hitting adolescence, children must answer two key questions:
1. What do I do (well)?
2. How do I fit in (to the different groups in my life)?
Answering these questions leads kids to follow their interests, looking for activities that engage them, activities where they excel, and activities that allow them to find their place among their peers.
For children under the age of twelve, it’s a generalist path they should take. Here’s why.
1. They need to discover their strengths.
Playing to your strengths is one of the keys to a successful life.
Happiness, life satisfaction and good mental health are yours when you’re able to follow your character and talent strengths.
Discovering your strengths comes through exploration. Trying this and dabbling in that. It requires a broad palette of activities.
Swedish authorities know this well. They encourage kids to try a broad range of activities both at school and after school so they can develop hobbies and interests that sustain them when life gets hard (and the days become short and cold).
These three elements come together to display an innate strength:
Performance: What is your child good at?
Energy: What does your child feel good doing?
High Use: What does your child freely choose to do?
Keeping this triad in mind will help you avoid pushing your child into an area that seems like a strength simply because they are good at it. But it gives them no joy!
Kids find their strengths through experimentation and exploration.
2. They need to build the foundation of their identities.
If childhood is a voyage of discovery, adolescence is about finding and establishing an identity.
Want to understand the notion of teenage identity?
Think Spice Girls (yep, I’m showing my age here), the popular girl band of the 1990s, packaged to appeal to teen girls, individual identities and all.
There was Sporty Spice, Posh Spice, Ginger Spice, Scary Spice and Baby Spice.
Each band member’s identity was neatly packed and wrapped, answering every teen girl’s dream.
Boys are no different.
Around the age of fifteen, many boys stop engaging in activities where they struggle, amplifying the areas where success is assured. If football is their bag, they’ll focus all attention, energy and learning to make themselves the best footballer they can be.
Their identity becomes wrapped around being a footballer (or whatever is important to them), with other areas, including schoolwork, coming a distant second.
If a child’s voyage of discovery has been wide enough, chances are they will have found their ‘thing’, their spark, their strength by mid-adolescence. If so, positive identity formation coming up.
If not, then many teens form negative identities around risk and experimentation.
3. They need to discover what they are built for.
Closely aligned with finding their strengths is the search for activities that align with kids’ personality and temperamental preferences.
We’ve all known people who shine in an area, but success brings them no joy.
The brilliant lawyer who hates their job. They’d rather be in hospitality.
The efficient, yet joyless waiter who’d rather be in the garden than come face to face with people.
The capable but grumpy teacher who wants nothing more than to write children’s books.
Each example involves a mismatch between activity and temperament. (The extrovert who wants to be around people but instead spends all his work time doing the detailed work best suited to the introvert. The person who loves to work with their hands but spends all day working with people. The creator who teaches instead.)
The oft-quoted message, “You can do anything you put your mind to,” is well-meaning but ill-informed.
A child may be able to accomplish anything, but doing so can come at a cost to their happiness and well-being. As I discovered in my research for my co-authored book Anxious Kids, it’s a major cause of childhood anxiety.
It’s better to help your child find the sweet spot where ability and temperament coincide.
But my child sticks to the activities that they’re good at
You may find that your child is reluctant to try different activities. They stick only to activities where they can excel. For instance, you may have a child who is:
Great at math, but won’t try at art.
Loves her sport, but steers clear of singing.
Very knowledgeable, but he will not raise his hand in class.
It’s easy to put this down to being a firstborn thing. Yes, firstborns are generally low-risk takers when it comes to trying new areas of learning or exploring new interests. They don’t like attempting activities where failure is an option.
However, not sticking your neck out and risking failure or making a fool of yourself is a shared by kids in all birth order positions.
If your child sticks to the straight and narrow, rather than branch out to try different endeavours:
Encourage them to try different activities. Highlight the immediate potential benefits of trying new activities, including enjoyment, as well as social and emotional benefits.
Model trying different activities yourself. In particular, let your child see you struggling and not taking failure to heart.
Develop a risk-taking mindset. Your attitude to learning is essential here. “Oh well. Not to worry” is better than “Oh no, what have you done?” when things go wrong.
Finally….
At a time when childhood is heavily commoditised, it’s easy to lose track of what’s in the best long-term interests of kids.
Childhood, developmentally, is a time of play, experimentation, and exploration. It’s a time to build a broad base of interests, strengths and talents, which will be whittled down in the identity-formation years of adolescence.
This makes childhood (the years before adolescence) a time of generalisation rather than specialisation, which will come in the later years.
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Parenting Toolbox Wise Words
“For parents, the days are long, but the years are short. Appreciate the small moments you have with children. Moments become memories that will sustain you when they are gone.”
Sweden can teach us a lot about successful parenting
I’ve spent a lot of time in Sweden visiting my son and his family. I’m struck by how differently children are raised here. than they are in Australia and other English speaking countries.
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