Ready your child to face life hurdles

I recall this guy who underwent a miraculous metamorphosis back in high school. This guy, from a pretty well to do family, loved fun and was a real rebel in our first two years of school. He was especially inventive when it came to breaking the school rules. School and education had no place in this guy’s game plan.

His performance, to nobody’s surprise, earned him a permanent position in the bottom quarter of the class.

turning point

Sometime in Form Three; his father left home, married another woman, and completely severed ties with his family. His unexpected exit meant a major shift in the old family’s financial fortunes. My classmate and his two siblings now had to make do with the modest salary earned by their mother, a secretary in a law firm.

More changes followed. The fellow was also unceremoniously thrust to the position of the ‘man’ of the house, as his siblings were both female.

In school, his change was spectacular. From a happy go lucky person with a ‘don’t care’ type of attitude, he reinvented himself, regrouped, and channelled any negative feelings he had into becoming the best. In this, he actually excelled. Thirty years later he is a very successful entrepreneur and a millionaire many times over. His mother and siblings are well and very well looked after.

What did he do? He, in my opinion, looked into himself and found the winner within. His mind-set changed albeit due to a change in circumstances. Education and the exams that came with it ceased to be an insurmountable hurdle, but more of a necessary rite of passage to get where he wanted to go.

Forced?

But do we have to have a momentous change in circumstance to get there? I reckon not. We can just stop and decide. A lot of children are transitioning into candidates and will sit exams at the end of next year. Our system is such that at a very young age, children are examined and the results have an all-important impact on the rest of their lives.

Even I looked at exams with the foreboding dread of a trapped creature awaiting the arrival of its hunter. I remember there were certain subjects I just could not get round to understanding or mastering, or so I imagined. Imagined because I, fortunately, had older siblings who kindly took it upon themselves to demystify the areas of study and the taking of exams.

Some of us look ahead and only see the big monster at the end yet 300 days that translates to 7, 200 hours is a long time. Imagine that then ask yourself if there is anything that cannot be accomplished in that amount of time.

I regularly, on this column, emphasise the importance of having the right mind-set. How can you prepare your child to face their final exams year? In every estate or shopping centre, posters advertising tuition adorn every wall. I do not dispute the fact that children need extra drilling to understand their subjects and or reiterate what they know, but I believe a little more needs to be done in rewiring the brain in the approach to the hurdle that is examinations and in the art of learning.

Take time to look around and find out alternative initiatives that are geared towards rewiring your child’s mind-set and empowering them, not only to face examinations confidently, but also to boldly face any hurdles that life presents.

Besides everything else, however, time management is crucial. Time is a finite entity; it can only be managed within, with no chance of expansion or transfer to a later day. Whatever passes you by today will not be retrievable later. If you do tomorrow what you should have done today, you relegate what you were supposed to do tomorrow to some future available space. By candidates creating a balanced study plan and schedule, they will be able to study each subject in its entirety and ultimately boost their exam performance.

As you plan for the holidays, think of ways you can get your child look to their future with a maturity way beyond their age. Let us get to a point where we don’t have to push them, but rather create the environment that triggers them to push us to offer all the support we can offer.