Explore to learn should be the motto. If children are encouraged on these lines, life for them becomes interesting and they end up learning a lot from their experience.
There is a story of a kid who was playing in the garden. His grandfather who was observing him noticed that the boy with a small twig was trying to prod into something. A moment later the boy jumped with joy came running to his grandpa and announced that he helped a butterfly come out of its cocoon.
His joy was short lived as he saw the tiny butterfly struggle and then collapse on the ground, after some time, never to fly again. The sad looking kid questioned his grandpa, why in spite of his helping the struggling butterfly come out of the cocoon it could not fly away?
Cheering up the kid the grandfather shared with the boy the law of nature. He explained, the tiny butterfly is required to struggle hard to come out of the cocoon. This struggle makes its wings strong to fly away. Since you helped the butterfly to come out without a struggle, possibly the wings remained weak and it could not fly.
The grandpa, also advised the kid to become stronger through hard work, try to do things on his own and not depend for small things on others.
Is there a message in this story for the parents and the elders too?
Yes, Instead of showing Empathy, when we tend to show Sympathy towards children and also grownups more often, we end up doing a disservice to them. Instead of agreeing with their shortcomings and helping them out every now and then, we must show understanding about their shortcomings and encourage them to work on them, to become stronger and capable.
We come across children who are shy, introvert and non participative. Not necessarily they are weak and incapable. We need to understand what are their inhibitions? With a little understanding we can encourage them to work on their inhibitions, come out of their shell and do wonders for themselves. We need to give them the right environment and the experience that will help them break the shell around them and enhance their self confidence.
Informal & unfamiliar environment such as outdoors, natural settings in particular are a great way of ensuring a wonderful experience for those who need to open up, wherein achievement & failure both are conducive to learning for children, youth and adults alike. The hard earned success gives you the wonderful feeling of achievement, whereas failures if any teach you to be resilient.
As rightly said, instead of giving someone fish to eat, allow him to learn the art of fishing.
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