Need advice on dealing with "I can't!" syndrome in children

In My Humble Opinion
21

Is the kid in to sports? Maybe it’s time to get him into them. Doesn’t have to be playing, but appreciating.

One of the most “beautiful truths” about baseball is that the BEST players only get a hit three out of ten times at bat. Only 30% of the time they are successful at what they are there to do! Every single (non-AL-pitcher) baseball hero strikes out sometimes - and every time, they still come back up to the plate. Every time, the fans still cheer them. Every time, people believe they are going to do what they are there to do - and he’s only going to do it THIRTY PERCENT of the time! (now would be a good time for a graphical representation of 30%)

Every sport has great lessons like that. David Beckham and Wayne Gretzky do not get a goal every time they get the ball/puck. Tom Brady does not complete every pass and Randy Moss does not catch every pass. Tiger woods does not make every putt and Andre Agassi does not ace every serve. Josh Beckett gives up home runs and Barry Bonds does not hit a home run every time at bat.

Those guys are heroes because they try. People don’t hate them when they fail - because it’s not about the little failures, it’s about a lifetime of trying and always coming back to try again until they get it right.

22

Feed him a bunch of Ritalin, sit him in front of the TV and he’ll be fine.

23

diggleblop, If you have nothing substantial to contribute, stay the hell out of the thread.

:rolleyes:

24

Don’t be a jerk.

25

Good article. Very interesting.

26

Wow, great sense of humor you guys have here. In fact, I have a lot to add, but when I posted my “joke” I had no time to write what I wanted, similar to the situation I’m in right now, as I have little time at the moment, I can’t. But in all honesty, since you guys don’t have a sense of humor and can’t take a joke (granted, a tasteless joke), I’ll do just that, stay our of your precious thread.

27

Oh, boo hoo, you big baby. You saw the tone of this thread…did it look like the OP was open to a joke? No. It was a serious thread requesting serious suggestions.

Go away and let the grown ups talk now.

28

How do the people around him react when he “doesn’t get it”?

Dad tried to teach me to play chess. He got furious when I didn’t get it at first try; I gave up after the third try. I’ve never learned to play chess.

Grandma taught me to play parcheesi, assault the castle and checkers. When we tried to make an illegal move she’d correct us in a matter-of-fact way; when we missed an opening she’d stop our hand before we moved the piece we meant to and say “look again, you’re missing something” in a completely matter-of-fact tone. She said “good job!” when we ate more than one piece in one move. If we had three possible ways to eat something, she wouldn’t stop us until we found the best one, but she’d make sure we saw at least one. Anybody fancy a game of parcheesi, assault the castle or checkers?

29

That article remembers me of being in a dinner with our most-veteran and newest teachers in the table, when I was finishing college. The Divine Father said we were elite students and we looked at him like he’d grown a conehead and elk’s horns; he laughed and said we didn’t feel like it because we were used to comparing ourselves with the elite, once we went out to the world we’d see what he meant.

He was right. (I’d been with the non-elite before college, but my parents forbade any comparison with my classmates)

Your nephew may need to learn:
that failing once doesn’t make you a failure,
that nobody was born knowing everything (was he born knowing how to use the bathroom? no, but he doesn’t wear diapers any more!),
and that sometimes you have to be the best, sometimes you have to be good enough.

30

If he/she followed that rule, they would never post. Then again, that’s just my opinion.

:cool:

31

Can I just chime in here, to add a possibly helpful clarification. I believe that words are tremendously important, and can have a huge impact on behaviour.

Maybe there’s a fine distinction to be made here. It may be, as fessie suggests, that in terms of an adult trying to encourage a more realistic and positive attitude, that words are less important than demonstrations and actions, and that ‘show don’t tell’ is great advice.

But in terms of how the child himself uses language, the words he uses can have a massive impact on how he behaves. Every word he hears himself utter is programming his own mind. If he hears himself say ‘I can’t’ and other things that equate to low self-esteem, he is re-enforcing the attitude and the behaviour that leads to more failure, and more opportunities to re-enforce the same loop.

Two children try something and fail. One says, ‘I can’t’ and feels upset. The other says, ‘Okay, maybe I didn’t do so well this time, but so what? I tried my best. And you know what, I bet next time I try, I’ll do a lot better’. Massive difference in attitude, behaviour, development and happiness. Works for adults as well as for children.

And, even though I respect where fessie is coming from with ‘show don’t tell’, I believe the words the child hears can be terribly important. There are an awful lot of children who have never, ever heard anyone say, ‘So what? It’s okay to try and not get brilliant results. I do it all the time. So does everyone else!’, or ‘You didn’t do so well? Well, that’s okay. You tried, didn’t you? Good for you. That’s all you can ever do… have a go. I’m proud of you’. Sometimes, we can all benefit from a little ‘I’m okay, You’re okay’, and some children and some people just need to hear it A LOT.

32

WhyNot, I’m surprised you have to “mistakenly” do things - I make *plenty *of genuine mistakes all the time that I use to teach my daughter! Lately she likes to point out if I’ve missed a turn when we’re driving, and now whenever I pull a U-turn, she says, “Mommy, did you go the wrong way again?”

Seriously though, I saw a LOT of myself in her temperament, and some of it scared me. For instance, she would try to buckle her own seatbelt, fail, and fling it down, yelling bitterly, “This is STUPID!” or “I can’t do it!”

All I can say is that I used some cognitive behavioral therapy ideas about bringing her reactions back into line with reality, rather than the distorted view we, ah, intense, folks fall into, always explained to her when I made a mistake, and had a light attitude about it, and also I try not to jump in and do things for her, but express confidence that she can come up with a solution, or if it truly beyond her ability, talk about it and help, but only to bridge the gap between what she can do and the completion of the task.

So I talked to her about how it’s even hard for grownups to work the belt on her carseat, and notice that she’s gotten everything else done except that one small part (straps are on her arms, chest clip buckled, etc.), and that everyone makes mistakes and needs to practice stuff before they can do it.

Now she’ll try to do the buckle sometimes, but when she can’t, she says cheerfully, “That’s OK, I just got some practice.”

33

Oh, I agree with you about the impact of words. I try to be very careful about the words I choose with my children.

But it seemed like in this case, a scenario has already been laid and talking the kid out of his mindset (which is the result of his reality) is failing.

That’s what’s so interesting about children. They reflect back the conclusion of the reality we’ve created, which may not be anything like what we intended to create.

34

This has worked fairly well with my daughter as well. Giving her something that is difficult that she wants to accomplish - like a video game. It doesn’t always work, we get her through some of the harder Wii battles - but she’s become much better at trying several times before breaking down into a fit - and now often asks for help after trying a few times rather than going straight to tantrum.

35

Well, I **am **Practically Perfect in Every Way! :smiley:

36

Campaign slogan? :smiley:

37

Gah. Now I’m going to have Mary Poppins songs running through my head all day.
When my own Number One Nephew (5-yrs) gets an attack of the I can’ts, I just retaliate with the other thing he does to drive his parents crazy: “Why?”

Usually goes something like this:

“I can’t! I can’t!”
“Why?”
“Because I just can’t!”
“Why can’t you?”
“Because!”
“Because why?”

Just the act of forcing him to keep answering questions seems to jar him out of tantrum-mode. And when he finally comes up with a reason why he thinks he can’t do something, I very calmly fix it with him, and try it again.

Usually leads to more whining but, eh, I’m an uncle. He knows that if the whining gets too much, Uncle Lightray will be going home and he’ll be left with mom and dad – and then he’s competing for their attention with Number Two Nephew.

38

So now we know WhyNot’s true identity! :slight_smile:

I just thought of something else you can model and overtly teach: sometimes you have some task that starts driving you over the edge with frustration, and *you can take a break *from it when you feel that starting to happen. If your child sees you struggling with, say, a tough knitting pattern, and you stop and say, “You know, this is making me too upset right now - I’m going to take a break and come back to it later,” you’ve taught them a hugely valuable lesson. Not only do you avoid getting yourself fully adrenalized and unhappy, but usually when you come back to the project later, with a calm mind, you will be able to figure out how to do it.

SpoilerVirgin, thanks for the link - very important article, especially to this one-time gifted girl child, the group they found “collapsed the most following failure.” Yep, it’s been enlightening about myself, and about my parenting.

39

Actually… that sounds just like me. I finished, but didn’t learn much in the process since it was the classes I skated through that earned me my degree.

Meanwhile, I’m in here wondering how you correct this problem in an adult. NajaHusband will try something one time and if he’s not immediately successful, he’ll never touch it again. He refuses to ever learn to drive a car with a standard transmission because he tried it once at sixteen and didn’t get it. We even had a fight about this yesterday–we went out to buy new desk chairs, a special treat for ourselves. Half way there, he asks me how to get to OfficeMax, a store which I’ve been to exactly once on a side of town where I rarely need to go. I took a stab at navigating, got the directions wrong, and when we clearly weren’t going to get there going that way, we turned around. We didn’t get it right the second time, either, and he throws a fit, huffing and puffing about how he’s just going home :mad:. This is a small town, we’d have found the place if we’d just gotten off the freeway in the general area, but he was all pissed that things hadn’t gone exactly perfectly and that’s the end of that shopping excursion.
I hate it, absolutely hate it when he does this. I’m terrified that he’s going to teach our (hypothetical) kids the same trait.
I tried gently pointing out to him that it wasn’t a big deal, and that we’d find the place faster trying now than wasting a whole other day making a different trip of it. He again huffs at me with “well I don’t know what you expect me to do, you didn’t know how to get there”. I say “I took a guess and I got it wrong, so what? I expect you to be an adult, do what needs doing to get the job done, and not throw a temper tantrum at the first sign of minor adversity. This isn’t a crisis situation. Let’s just go to a different store, since we were going to price-shop at two places anyway. It’s really, really not a big deal.”

He went home. I just moved into the driver’s seat and went out and got the damn chairs myself–and scored two beautiful chairs, way nicer than our budget would have allowed otherwise at 50% off. I never really know what to do–I feel like he needs to see me shrug things off and just get the task completed, but I don’t want him to feel like I’m showing him up or something, either. I told him where I was going and invited him along, but he was mad and didn’t want to come.

He has this (sometimes flattering, sometimes irritating) image of me where he honestly thinks I can do anything in the world. Like fix anything that breaks or cut his hair, or get a good deal buying a car. He really thinks I’m capable of doing anything in the world–but it’s only because I’m not afraid of trying and failing and learning how in the process. I don’t know how to make him understand that.

40

NajaNivea, sounds like your husband has a really low frustration tolerance. What was he like when you got back with the chairs? Was he still in a mood or had he moved on?