Can you help me understand your comment? Being the best at one thing is very different from being good at everything, so it's unclear how that advice applies to your children.
Also, what does "do some" mean?
Also, what does "do some" mean?
My kid pushes too hard when he realizes he's plateau'd at some skill level and then gets disappointed at the steepness of the learning curve.
It'll go from chess to skiing, then it is swimming and now he's running a trail 10k in March. While he's able to say Good morning in everything from Esperanto to Klingon, by way of Welsh and Japanese, he's not gotten fluent at any language so far.
Not that any of that is bad in itself, but he goes into a maximum-effort "not fun" mode when he gets moderately good at anything.
The "not fun" mode kills the joy and then the activity becomes almost painful.
Mostly I try to help him stay in the happy zones with "A little is enough" instead of setting himself up for failure constantly like this, by failing his own expectations.
The younger one is obviously out to out-compete the older, so hopefully I only have to do this teaching once for both of them.
Keep up the good work! Parenting is hands down the best thing in the world, ironically, excelling at it goes a really long way.
Also being a generalist is OK.
Perhaps the best approach is to have conversation with the child, that furthers reflection/introspection. Basically giving the child the tools to notice such patterns themselves and make decisions based on their iwn insight.
They’ll maybe read, watch tutorials, engage in social media, chat about doing a thing, but then never actually do it regularly enough (even poorly or briefly) to see what their improvement trajectory looks like.
They’ll go a week or month between engaging in doing a thing (even if not specifically denoted “practice,”) and only do when bursts of excitement or inspiration hit. And because of the gaps between starting basically from scratch each time, they stay a beginner for years and years with no insight on their actual capabilities. Certainly guilty myself.
I read it as you don’t need to play football, basketball, and be writing a book, but you probably should do something. At the other end you don’t need to be the best in the world at anything, but you should try.
Knowing to cook is a useful life skill. That doesn’t mean learning a dozen types of ethic foods or preparing instagram worthy meals, but it does mean you should learn a little. Thus “do some” not “do everything” or worse “do nothing.”