We are so quick to judge and analyse the shortcomings of our children especially when they enter the teen phase. We tend to scrutinise each of their moves fearing if they are productive or not, as per our standards.
This 13 year old surprised all of us with her persistence this week. When she first arrived at Aarohi, she had been troubled by all the bullying in school, her struggles to read and write had lowered her confidence immensely.
Over the next 8 months, she slowly started opening up as mentors worked with her, sensitive to her needs. She explored different interests that excited her. It began with exploring art, craft, mehendi, video editing, hacking. Of course, there were fair share of challenges – her struggles with screen time but the silver lining was her self-reflection of getting distracted easily.
The power of ‘What Else?’
However, as a mentor there isn’t a bigger win than seeing the child feeling empowered to take charge of her own learning. She started this week, quite exasperated, sharing ‘I am doing singing, editing and hacking but i want to go beyond’. All one had to do is expand her universe of possibilities and ask ‘What else’? She stood still for some time, not having any thoughts, all one had to do was wait with her processing and not rush in to giving ‘adult’ inputs. After some time, she shared ‘may be i want to try movie making and puppet show’
We sat down to plan the steps to get her movie into making.