Scolding = improving?

Den cried in her ballet class yesterday. I did not know about it until one of the mothers sms me at night.

I was in the line dance class while she was in her ballet class. She seemed to be her active and cheerful self after the class and never mentioned anything.

Usually, I would ask her how was the class and did the teacher call her name (she likes to talk in class). Somehow, yesterday, I forgot to ask her.

After I received the sms, I asked her about it. At first, she denied it.

I talked to her for a few minutes and ST threaten to call her teacher and finally, she told us she cried because her teacher scolded her. When I asked her why her teacher scolded her, she claimed she had forgotten (whenever she wanted to avoid a topic, she always said she had forgotten).

After a few min more talking to her, finally she admitted teacher scolded her because she cannot remember her steps. She also claimed, half the classes didn't remember their steps and were scolded by the teacher too. She was the only one that cried though.

We were at Yamaha when we confronted her. So when we reached home, I hug her and talked to her more. I talked to her about why she cried and why she did not want us to find out what happened.

She admitted she felt shameful because she can't remember her steps. She wanted to be the BEST in everything she do (she has been a perfectionist since young, and I have been trying hard in changing that). She cannot accept she is not doing as well as some others.

I talked to her about how God gives everyone different gifts and how impossible and unfair it will be for anyone to be BEST in everything. She thought about it and told me she wanted to be BEST in ballet and Yamaha then (sigh!). She also claimed she wanted to teach ballet and piano when she grow up! (That's news to me! Not sure if that's just to justify her wants in being the best.)

I told her I'm the second to last in my line dance class. I'm really bad at anything physical. She must be taken after me. :)

I told her I understood how hard it can be in remembering steps. She felt better after she knew I'm the second to last in my class. Then she wanted to know who is the last. After that, she tried to comfort me and told me she thought everyone dance well in my class including me.

After that, she had enough hug hug and ran to play with her things, and left me pondering about what I really want to write about today -- can we improve kids' performance by scolding?

I'm not angry with her ballet teacher or anything like that. Sweden cried easily anyway. But just this made me think about how we use scolding in hope of correcting any wrong in our kids. Is it effective? Will it ever work?

I am really one of the worst dancers in my line dance class. Just imagine, if my teacher starts scolding me, will it make me a better dancer? Will it help to make me remember my steps? Off cause NOT! It will only make me more nervous and make more mistakes.

That led to self-reflection. Do I scold Sweden in hope that she will listen and improve?

I seldom scold her during her study. Whenever she has anything she doesn't understand or makes any careless mistake, I just make her do it again and again. I don't see the point of getting angry. The only time I scolded her during her study was when she was not paying attention. But then even that, I found it not effective. So nowadays, whenever she is losing her concentration, I ask her to run a few rounds to clear her mind and come back to study or change the subject and come back to it later. So I don't usually get angry when we study.

Someday, it takes her forever to decode(read) the phonic paragraph (in Teach Your Children To Read In 100 Easy Lessons), to keep myself from being impatient, I read my newspaper while listening to her read.

Getting angry with her for other stuff is another matter. I scold her whenever I feel it is something she is able to do but does not do it properly. For example, taking hours to finish her meal, takes forever to get ready, is absent-minded, some character flaws, pestering, etc. One of the things that really get on my nerves is when she takes more than 1 hour to sleep on the bed before she falls asleep.

But then I asked myself, can scolding improve all that? The answer is maybe some but really not much. First of all, some of the stuff I put under this category of "things she is able to do but not doing them properly", is my assumption that she can be in control of these things, but can she really?

We all have sleepless nights, and we can force ourselves to sleep, maybe she has the same problem, even though I perceived as she doesn't close her eyes or she is playing with her fingers or etc.

Can scolding improve being absent mind? If yes, then maybe I should get someone to start scolding me.

It is much more productive and not to mention speedier when I continue to stay at the dining table with her after I finished my meal. Scolding or withdrawing privilege doesn't seem to work too well.

Character flaw? Don't we all wish we can scold our kids out of dishonesty, etc? We can always hope. :)

I supposed I need to find a better way than scolding. :(

It means more work on my part - more patience- but then the best thing about motherhood is making us more Christ-like! :)