“it’s easy” can make scary tasks scarier

lierdumoa:

whodearmedear:

autisticeducator:

realsocialskills:

When people are struggling or afraid to try something, well-meaning people often try to help them by telling them that the thing is easy. This often backfires.

For instance:

• Kid: I don’t know how to write a paper! This paper has to be 5 pages long, and we have to do research! It’s so hard!
• Parent: Don’t worry. 5 pages isn’t that much. This isn’t such a hard assignment. 

In this interaction, the parent is trying to help, but the message the kid is likely hearing is “This shouldn’t be hard. You’re failing at an easy thing.”

If something is hard or scary, it’s better to acknowledge that, and focus on reassuring them that it is possible. (And, if necessary and appropriate, help them to find ways of seeing it as possible.)

For instance:

• Kid: I don’t know how to write a paper! This paper has to be 5 pages long, and we have to do research! It’s so hard!
• Parent: It’s hard, and that’s ok. You can do hard things.
• Parent: What are you writing about?
• Kid: Self-driving cars. But I can’t find anything. 

And so on.

This isn’t unique to interactions between parents and children. It can also happen between friends, and in other types of relationships.

tl;dr If something’s hard for someone, telling them that it’s easy probably won’t help. Reassuring them that they can do hard things often does help, especially if you can support them in figuring out how to do the thing.

They have actually done research on this. In cultures and households where kids are told that to struggle with something is a good thing, the kids are more likely to continue to try to do the thing before giving up. In their minds, they are thinking “This thing is hard but if I keep trying or try a different method, maybe I will succeed at it.”

Telling people that things should be easy or that it should come natural (aka talent), actually inhibits their willingness to try as they think that if they can’t do a task that is “easy”, something must be wrong with them.

I see good results reminding my kids that “this thing is hard because you’re doing it for the first time, it’s like that for everybody at first. You put work into it and practice and then it gets easier.”

Not to be dramatic, but this is actually the worst possible thing you could say within hearing range of a so-called “gifted child.” Lemme explain.

As a “gifted child” I was immediately good at a lot of things I tried the first time I tried them. I wasn’t immediately good at everything of course, but there were quite a few things I was immediately good at.

So on the rare occasion I did struggle, and an adult told me, “That’s okay – everyone struggles at first” my immediate response was – this teacher is a LIAR.

See, I already knew that not everyone struggles at first because I didn’t usually struggle. And I would see teachers tell students who didn’t perform as well as me, “well this student just has more experience doing this than you” and I internalized the idea that this was just a LIE that teachers told “stupid” kids to make them feel better about their inadequacies.

So I spent most of my pre-college years with a superiority complex the size of Texas and a deep mistrust of “Lying Teachers.”

Then I got into an elite college where suddenly everyone was as high performing or even higher performing than I was. Suddenly I was really was struggling all the time, with every new thing I had to learn. And guess what happened?

I immediately had a nervous breakdown and flunked out of college in like 1.5 semesters.

Well-meaning teachers tend to gear all their encouragement towards low-performing students, without considering how these words are affecting the high-performing students in their classrooms.

Instead of saying “everyone struggles at first” try saying, “Just because something is hard for you now doesn’t mean you can’t still become good at it. And just because you’re good at something now doesn’t mean someone who had a harder time initially won’t eventually surpass you.” 

This is a more truthful statement. It encourages the low-performing students, without giving the high-performing students a complex.