The Self-Help Principle of Helping Your Kids

The mother of a five-year-old girl was in deep distress. She believed that her girl had concentration problems so that the latter would obtain less and less marks in school examinations. According to our experiences in helping people with learning difficulties, concentration problems arise from fear. As an animal, humans will instinctively choose survival over all other values. When a human senses danger around, he will not spare concentration for other “non-essential” items at the time, e.g. learning.

During a personal coaching session, the mother and the girl were to build a tower as high as possible using wooden blocks. As the tower grew higher, so were their fear levels. Every additional block misplaced might mean the collapse of the whole structure. When it was the mother’s turn to add a block, she would take her legs up to the chair, seemingly to avoid being hit by fallen blocks. When it was the daughter’s turn, she would bite her fingernails and at the same time, murmuring to herself that she would soon die from fear. The most illuminating fact was that afterwards, when asked of the dominant emotion during the process, the mother said she felt it was fun and she felt her daughter was excited. When being asked direct if she felt fear, she gave a very affirmative “no”. After hearing the observations said above, she sank into a long deep thought. Then, she emerged again to admit that she did have neglected it.

Everyone lives in a certain environment. Parents are vital elements in the child’s environment and their important role models. If the parents do not recognize their own as well as the child’s fears, the child will gradually learn to live in fears without their own self-knowing, too. As the issue progresses, it eventually surfaces as certain problems, lack of concentration being one of them.