Children's Education

In my opinion, a child is always a child, in particular my son, a 9-year-old boy. So I always treat him as a child. I think there are lots of toys and games in his world. I seldom think that he has the same feelings as adults. But one thing changed my opinion.

Last night, we were talking about what happened during the day as we usually do at supper.  My son suddenly asked me, "Am I silly? " I was confused and asked, "Why? What happened?" He said he spent $5 to register for the chess tournament in school. I know he is very interested in chess, but he is not good at it. So I said,"That is wonderful! I support you." He said,"You know, this money is my pocket money. I have been saving it up for a long time. I could use it to buy cookies. But now I use it to buy failure and ridicule. It is not worth it. I am really silly." I got it. He was worried about failure. He cared about what people thought of him. The most important thing was he could think about how he spent the money. I was glad he could think like that. So I encouraged him. I told him that as new learner, it was not important to win in the contest. It was an opportunity to learn from others. He should enjoy playing chess. On the other hand, as a newcomer, it was important for him to participate in all kinds of activities in school. It could help him to get used to the life in Canada. It was very worth spending the money. After hearing my explanation, my son looked happy.

Actually, parents' leading and encouragement are very important to children during their growing years. We always say that parents are the first teachers of children. That is so true. With the help of parents,  children have more confidence to overcome difficulties. In addition, from this incident, I recognized sometimes parents should not treat their child as only child. They are smarter than we imagine. We should learn to help them in an appropriate way.