Did you ever sit next to your child as he or she was doing homework and see fear, anxiety or panic arise over not being able to do it? You try to calm them down, and you can’t.
Did you ever stop to think that Maybe they are reacting to their homework based on a past experience? For instance, if your child had a fear of dogs, you would try to connect your child’s current fear of dogs to a previous experience (perhaps a prior dog bite) and try to help them overcome the fear. What if when your child is doing homework he or she is having a reaction connected to an earlier experience?
If this is true, we probably don’t know what that past experience was, so how can we help them overcome their fear or anxiety? We have no idea if something happened at school to cause them to feel stupid or incapable. Maybe someone called them a name or maybe a teacher scolded them while teaching a particular subject. Maybe a bad grade or some other heartbreak is connected to a bad feeling about their capability. It is so easy for our children to become stuck without us knowing exactly why they are feeling this way. So, how can we help them?
That is the beauty of Maybe. As we begin to see anxiety arising in our children, we can have them sit back, take a deep breath and give them a glass of water. Then we can tell them the following:
(I use for example, a child struggling with math homework.)
“You know everything that has happened before to you while you were trying to understand math does not matter in this moment. Just because you did not understand math last year, last month, or even during second period, does not mean that you will not understand it right now or in the future. How can you absolutely know for sure what the outcome of your trying to do your homework will be? You can’t know and that is why there is a beautiful philosophy called “Maybe.” Maybe says that there is more than one possibility out there for you to complete your math homework and understand what is going on in class. Maybe you just need to breathe, maybe you need some help, maybe you won’t understand it today but you will understand it next week, next month or next year. There are so many possibilities in this moment, let’s not get stuck on that thought that maybe it can’t be different, because maybe it can.”
Look at your child’s face in this moment. You may just see hope come alive. You may just see the past matter a bit less. Try to keep talking to them about this idea of Maybe.
Failure will be so much less threatening when your kids see it through the light of Maybe — always offering them another opportunity to succeed at whatever they are attempting long after the homework is done.