My son turned ten yesterday. I asked him, “How do you like being ten?”
He thought for a minute. “It’s pretty much the same as being nine. Except now I’m paying more attention to my capitalization.”
Just then, his father called him to come do his chores, and he sighed. “Yep, it’s just like an ordinary day.”
As he walked off to do his work, I laughed. What was it about being ten that made capitalization so much more important?
Since that little conversation, he’s made several other comments. “I’m trying to pay more attention to things,” he told me last night. And today, “I’m being more serious about that now.” It seems as though a switch has been flipped and he’s starting to understand the importance of taking responsibility for himself, his actions, and his choices.
Hooray, and I hope it lasts, is all I can say.
As parents, we can guide and encourage and instruct until we’re blue in the face. (That may be considered just an expression, but any parent can tell you, there are days when you are most definitely blue in the face.) But when the child “gets” it for themselves, that’s when the changes really start to happen.
A child who is self-motivated will progress much further, much more rapidly, and much more successfully than one who is dragged every step of the way. Their outlooks will be brighter, too.
Unfortunately, there’s nothing we can do as parents to hasten this moment of realization. Our task is to plant the seeds and water them so that when the child is ready for the harvest, there’s something there to harvest. We need to keep trying, to keep instilling those values, to keep teaching those principles of capitalization so that when he decides he wants to pay attention to them, he knows what they are.
And in the meantime … we hold on by our fingernails, knowing that what we’re doing will pay off, if we can stay alive long enough to see it happen.
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