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Once a little boy was playing outdoors and found a fascinating caterpillar. He carefully picked it up and took it home to show his mother. He asked his mother if he could keep it, and she said he could if he would take good care of it.
As the butterfly came out the boy was surprised. It had a swollen body and small, shriveled wings. He continued to watch the butterfly expecting that, at any moment, the wings would dry out, enlarge and expand to support the swollen body. He knew that in time the body would shrink and the butterfly’s wings would expand.
The little boy got a large jar from his mother and put plants to eat, and a stick to climb on, in the jar. Every day he watched the caterpillar and brought it new plants to eat.
But neither happened! The butterfly spent the rest of its life crawling around with a swollen body and shriveled wings.
One day the caterpillar climbed up the stick and started acting strangely. The boy worriedly called his mother who came and understood that the caterpillar was creating a cocoon. The mother explained to the boy how the caterpillar was going to go through a metamorphosis and become a butterfly.
It never was able to fly… As the boy tried to figure out what had gone wrong his mother took him to talk to a scientist from a local college. He learned that the butterfly was SUPPOSED to struggle. In fact, the butterfly’s struggle to push its way through the tiny opening of the cocoon pushes the fluid out of its body and into its wings. Without the struggle, the butterfly would never, ever fly. The boy’s good intentions hurt the butterfly.
The little boy was thrilled to hear about the changes his caterpillar would go through. He watched every day, waiting for the butterfly to emerge. One day it happened, a small hole appeared in the cocoon and the butterfly started to struggle to come out. At first the boy was excited, but soon he became concerned. The butterfly was struggling so hard to get out! It looked like it couldn’t break free! It looked desperate! It looked like it was making no progress!
As you go through school, and life, keep in mind that struggling is an important part of any growth experience. In fact, it is the struggle that causes you to develop your ability to fly.
The boy was so concerned he decided to help. He ran to get scissors, and then walked back (because he had learned not to run with scissors…). He snipped the cocoon to make the hole bigger and the butterfly quickly emerged!
As teachers, our gift to you is stronger wings…
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Article for Parents Like the little boy who snipped the cocoon to help the struggling butterfly, sometimes as parents we make the mistake of protecting our children too much from failing or falling. We want to make them happy and keep them safe from all harm and, in the process, we forget to provide opportunities for our children to experience the process of achieving happiness itself. We make life easy for them and remove nearly every opportunity to grow strong through struggle and failure. When we eliminate pain, their ability to endure hardship weakens.
We jump to our child’s rescue by moving him to another school when he had a fight with a classmate. Do we realize that our intervention in inappropriate ways and times in order to respond to our children’s difficulties has impacts on the development of their independence and problem-solving abilities? Children who are too quick to get help will lose the opportunity to experience real difficulty in life. They are used to being helped when faced with problems, so they are not trained well to solve their own problems. As they grow older, they become less mature, and more dependent on others because they are accustomed to being dependent on their parents.
Parents need to let children experience failure.
Parents need to let children fall. Parents need to let children learn to wait. Parents need to let children face and undergo difficult tasks.
A person’s ability and skill to deal with life’s difficulties or problems is not something that is instantly and automatically acquired. It takes continuous practice and process. When a child faces difficulty, he is actually getting a chance to practice his ability to solve problems. He sharpens the sensitivity of reason and logic to find alternative solutions that can be taken. He also learns to make decisions and accept the consequences of his decisions. Through problems and difficulties, children learn to manage their feelings and emotions. Through the difficulties our children face, they learn to persevere and exercise endurance in the trials of life.
Children must feel that they are achieving something with their own abilities. Children must feel a sense of pride in their achievements. Strong self-esteem is the result of an achievement process, not just an affirmation.
“Discipline your children, and they will give you peace; They will bring you the delights you desire.” (Proverbs 29:17) Every parent must have the desire to fulfill the needs of their children. When children are in trouble, we are often urged to quickly provide them with all the help, in the hope that we can alleviate, even release them from the pressure and discomfort of the problems they face. We do the homework for our children when they could not submit it on time. Or perhaps we feel embarrassed or reluctant to mess around with prolonged problems, so we are encouraged to immediately find a way out for our child’s problems.
So, if children are trained earlier to overcome difficulties, they will become capable in facing any obstacles and challenges in the future and rely on their hope for God.
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