Welcome to Boldschoolers! We’ve talked about Choice and Connection, so today, let’s talk about Competence…the last of our three psychological needs that make up intrinsic motivation. When we think of competence, I think we often think of our kids being able to do things, to have skills, to know things and that’s absolutely what we want. There’s a bigger idea of competence that I’d like you to sink into. Our kids want to feel like they can age-appropriately manage everyday life, they want to demonstrate skill over time, to grow and learn every day. That kind of forward momentum in making progress towards meaningful goals is a big motivator. The things we are most proud of are not typically things that were handed to us without our own personal sweat equity. The challenges that are most satisfying are the ones that we had to work hard to overcome and master.
There are reasons that our kids turn away from such challenges…maybe the challenge is too great, too boring, or lacks relevancy. Maybe the challenge brings up a negative belief system and debilitating self-talk that we need to address. Maybe goals are overwhelming because our kids are tired, hungry or in some other ways aren’t lacking in wellbeing. We can talk about all of those things and more and many of them can be intercepted upstream and eliminated before they ever rear their stubborn heads.
This is where your work comes in. One of our jobs as our children’s partner is to notice the tendencies, to root out what’s really going on, to listen and watch with a curious heart. Unless we are tuned in, we can’t move upstream to prevent our kid getting tossed in the water. Instead, we’ll be busy rescuing drowning kids, downstream.
One of the most common obstacles to competency is learning that is perceived as too difficult from your child’s perspective. Let’s talk about that today. Frustration or overwhelm often happen when learning something new. Children often lack prior knowledge and have limited knowledge frameworks in their brains that can support new learning.
Establishing prior knowledge before learning something new is a great idea. You might do this through a concrete learning experience, like a project, a field trip or other hands-on experience. Just make sure to follow such experiences with a debrief that names and discusses the key ideas and concepts you hoped to get in your child’s body in some way.
Relate new learning to things your child already understands through discussion, experience, storytelling or even embedded within some type of game.
When learning something new, think about breaking skills down into valuable sub-skills…bite-size pieces…because the experience of forward movement will allow your child to feel successful immediately. Motivation is stoked from little win…to little win.
In reading, for example, learn frequently occurring sight words before learning to read less-common sight words. Choose skills that have some safety built into them because lots of errors will be made when learning something new. Fear and anxiety will quickly erode feelings of competency, so initially choose skills that offer small wins.
In addition to sub-skills, ideas can be organized into overarching themes. For example, when discovering the past through the study of history, your child might learn about the big ideas that repeat across a particular time in history before concentrating on detailed facts, such as names and dates.? Once the historical events are organized into such categories as, Big Ideas, Place on the History Timeline, or Advantages/Consequences, remembering the names of key persons and the dates of the events will begin to make more sense and be easier to master.
This is an example of a technique called chunking. If students concentrate only on basic “recall” information, the real purposes for the study of history are probably lost. Competency is about meaning-making. We can create competence by helping children zoom in towards important sub-skills and zoom out towards important big ideas.
When learning something new…children can ask:
What do I already know how to do?
What’s one small step beyond what I know how to do?
Who or what can help me learn that next step?”
Happy Boldschooling!
A parable from Dan Heath’s book UPSTREAM (2020):
You and a friend are near a river when you see a child struggling to stay afloat, being washed down the river. You both dive in to save the drowning child and bring the child to safety. Shortly after, you both turn to see another child coming down the river…and another after that. You can barely keep up with the onslaught and responsibility of saving struggling children when suddenly your friend swims back to shore and climbs out of the river. You frantically yell, “Where are you going?” and your friend responds, “I’m going upstream to tackle the guy that keeps throwing these kids in the water."
