Giving the A

Me and Trish were reading a book on attitude/pressure and performance. In the book it spoke of "giving the A" which was their way of saying to help the person assume their own exceptional performance. Create the assumption of great success in their own minds and their performance increased from the combination of confidence granted, pressure relieved and support given. We had discussed how we had seen this in action throughout life in real life examples. I myself saw that on a regular basis in the traditional martial arts (TMA). TMA is seldom performance based but each student still holds the idea of efficacy being paramount in his mind despite the often untested nature of TMA. It was a fairly common practice to promote a person to the next rank and watch as they "grew into the rank". Sometimes a person would plateau and never reach the next level of expertise UNTIL you promoted them and tossed them in the fire.



Long intro for whats upcoming but...



Last week we decided to declare Chris 4 years old while at his grandparents house. He is technically still 3 until the 7th of Sept but we were having his party in Vegas with the family and just decided to start 4 a bit early. There was no motive for the early promotion other than not needing to do it again later, however, it certainly had an effect on him beyond what I had imagined. Apparently Chris had a number of assumptions as to what a 4 year old could do that a 3 year old was still practicing at. Over the last few days of his 4ness he has informed me of many things he can do now without error. A small list of examples thus far includes:



Perfect potty control and clean up. No longer needs to be reminded to go potty.



He does not bother sounding out small words anymore. He can simply read them now. Sudden mastery over R controlled vowels and vowel combinations in larger words. Last night he told me that HE would read the bed time story tonight because big kids do that. He read me the whole book with only subtle help.



Addition and subtraction problems require a LOT less finger counting.



Big kids use real forks, spoons and plates. Not baby versions.



The list is growing every day but those are the things that hit in the three days since being declared 4. I have seen many other things such as increased interests and listening/instruction following but those things are no doubt perceptually bias on my part because now I am looking for drastic improvement.

I love that boy and he never ceases to amaze me.