I am lucky to know many excellent mamas who treat their very young children with respect and dignity, allowing them to make age-appropriate decisions as often as possible.

One such mama shared a story that we can all learn from as we strive to accomplish great things in life. Great things such as weaning and potty-training.

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Is there a chance that you subscribe to the notion that children (and humans in general) are fundamentally wicked creatures who must be coerced into doing right?

Or might you believe that the only way to get yourself to do anything is to be browbeaten or shamed into it?

I have discovered that these attitudes are prevalent around me — so much so that people don’t even realize that they have them. They don’t even know that there is another way.

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As a teacher, it’s all too easy to make kids cry.

It can be disconcerting when they start crying on the spot, but I’m very used to it by now. Depending on the situation, I hand them a Kleenex and we keep going, or we stop everything and address the issue.

It’s worse, however, when they go home and cry — and I hear about it later. This means that the kid cares so much about what I think that they keep it together in my presence, smiling and nodding, and then fall apart later.

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There is a thought that is incredibly destructive anything you may be trying to do, whether you are standing with a parachute on your back about to jump out of a plane, putting pencil to paper to take an important exam, or holding your newborn baby for the first time.

The thought is: ¨Maybe I just can’t do this.¨

This thought holds us back from lots of things that we could be great at. It delays our progress for years or even decades in an activity or skill that might really benefit us. It destroys our confidence and prevents as for moving forward, resulting in a self-fulfilling prophecy.

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You’re practicing some Bach or your tennis serve or a purl stitch…and then you hit a wrong note, whiff the ball, or drop a stitch off of the needle.

At this moment, you have a choice! Do you:

a) Tell yourself, “It’s okay! You got this.” or

b) Tsk yourself?

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The human brain is extraordinarily good at optimization.

You do something a few times, and your brain goes, “Okay, I get it — we’re doing it this way from now on.” The neural pathways are strengthened so that next time, it takes less effort to get the same result. Meanwhile, unused pathways are ignored, like decommissioned highways.

Our nervous system facilitates and streamlines our learning. It gives us the so-called “muscle memory” we rely on when it comes to developing complex skills like learning a musical instrument, typing, or skateboarding. It allows us to chunk smaller pieces of information together, like recipes, times tables, and addresses, in order to memorize them.

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