My elder girl prepared the 'magic show' for Talent show in her elementary school last year when she was in the third grade.
Honestly, I did not want her to prepare the magic for the talent show. Because I thought that she was better at dancing or playing the piano than doing magic. It was only two months that she had taken magic class when she was in Korea. In addition, it was hard for me to help her do well in doing magic,which I didn't know, as I was busy at that time.
In the end, she did magic on Talent show.
The result was big failure....
The background music stopped while my girl was performing magic, she was so embarrassed that she forgot the next magic, and she managed to end her magic, crying.
Unexpectedly, however, the audience gave her a big hand and after she came down back to my seat, people next to me praised her. If she had been in Korea, she could have been teased by her friends.
I felt and learnt 'respect' culture in America.
That is a truth about this culture, we do our best to give children a lot of praise just for trying new things. Failure is a valuable learning process that we have all shared at one time or another. Adults wouldn't want there own children to feel the weight of shame for failing so they are generous in demonstrating empathy in the failings of children… at least in public. We call that "cutting a person some slack" which I believe has its origins in a nautical sailing term having to do with the tautness or slack of the sails.
ReplyDeleteI hope she still likes magic and continues to pursue it as a hobby. When I was a kid my friend loved performing magic tricks. He sawed me in half once… not really :)