Children have different ways of dealing with fear. Last night, I pushed the envelope a little and asked them to go beyond their comfort zone on balance beam. They had all sorts of reactions...
...one of them teared up and kept coming to me to ask me to change my expectation. I gave her intermediate steps to take and she kept asking if that was enough. I held firm to my expectation and in no time she ended up doing what I asked. It ended up being no big deal once she finally decided to do it. She ended up being the first one finished.
...another one kept trying to convince me that she wasn't ready. She'd show me on a lower surface and say "see, I won't get my hands on!" Eventually, she decided to just go ahead a try it. She made it on her first try!
...one of the girls gave me a look at first like, "you want me to do what?" But within minutes she was not only doing what I asked her but asking ME if she could go on a higher beam!
...there was one girl that didn't have the ability of some of the others, but was more eager to get up on that beam than any of them!
...one of the girls got frustrated because she couldn't finish her first assignment so that she could move on to the new exciting challenge. Once she finally did, she was happy as a lark.
...the one that typically balks in the face of a new challenge took awhile to get up the nerve, but ended up surprising herself with how great she did.
...the girl that took the longest was quite possibly the most physically prepared. She got on the beam NUMEROUS times and just stood there, looked at me with sad eyes, asked me to give her a hug just in case she died (can we say DRAMATIC?), and then I finally suggested stacking up more mats at first to make her feel comfortable on the new beam. She gradually took the mats away until she was doing (with huge success) the goal I'd set out for her!
By the end of the night, all of the girls had taken the step I'd set before them and--SHOCKER--all of them were proud of themselves!!
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