“A man’s reach should exceed his grasp,” said Robert Browning. It’s so true. That’s how you realise your maximum potential.
Every child has untapped ability which you find only by reaching out and exploring. And a good education system will find ways of untapping it and letting it flow freely. But parents also have to complement it by providing the child with a conducive atmosphere at home to blossom.
Almost every child, irrespective of capability, could achieve much, much more if only the parents stopped imposing pre-set limits on what they expect of them.
Parents should aim high for their wards. And aiming high doesn’t mean aiming for more and more exams with tinkered grade boundaries.
A toddler, after a diaper change, can surprise you by throwing the used one in the trash. You never know a son or a daughter can stun you, as soon as they get their driving permit, by driving the whole family from London to Edinburgh the next day. Give a nine-year-old a saw, who knows he may cut down a decent sized crabapple tree. The point to be driven home for parents is – don’t underestimate your child and block his/her growth with your predispositions.
A leading charity has warned that almost half of British parents risk condemning their children to a life of underachievement by seriously underestimating how much they should be learning as toddlers.
Research by Save The Children suggests that, far from the popular idea of “helicopter” or “tiger” parents hot-housing children long before they go to school, hundreds of thousands of adults hold potentially harmfully low expectations for their child’s early learning.
A survey of people with children between the ages of two and 10 carried out for the study found that 47% believe their children ought to know about 100 words or fewer by the time they are two and a half. In reality an average child’s vocabulary would be six times that size by that stage in their development. The charity research report was published in the Daily Telegraph.
Save The Children argues that spending “hundreds of millions” of pounds a year on new expert support for young children could ultimately save the country billions, when the costs of educational underachievement in later life are taken into account.
The report highlights Government figures estimating that one in five children were behind in language development at the age of five last year, equivalent to almost 130,000 children in England or about six children in every reception class.
That equates to every five-year-old in London, Manchester, Sheffield, Liverpool and Newcastle combined, the charity said.
Separate figures show that around one in five children – or one in three of those from the poorest families – cannot read well by the time that they finish primary school.
That suggests that many of those who start school behind their peers stay behind, despite the interventions in schools.
