How to support and challenge your child

Performance Psychologist Michael Gervais, PhD talks about how to support and challenge your child when they have an innate talent or interest
How To Challenge Your Child In A Supportive Way
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How to support and challenge your child

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One of the great challenges for parents is to be able to observe the talent that their child naturally has. And while that’s really important to be able to find what is a child is naturally good at and the best what to do this is to expose them to as many things as possible at a young age that they might gravitate toward. And once they gravitate towards something and then you start to notice that their good at it and they got some natural ability. To enter into the world class stage it takes an incredible amount of time, an incredible amount of work and if there’s not an early spark for somebody at a young age that they really love it, that they really are engaged in how they experience themselves in the craft that the arc is too long for them to be able to really figure out how to get good if they don’t really love it. So talent alone is not enough and as a parent what we want to be able to do is there’s two words that are really important. Want to be able to support and challenge. And so the support is the first condition and we support them no matter what they do, no matter what their performance is that we love them no matter what and that they are special because they agree. The second is that we want to be able to challenge them. And that challenge is often times confused with this we’re pushing. The challenging is really for them. It’s their experience that there’s a challenge out there for them not that we’re challenging them. But there’s something out there for them if they really commit to it. If they can develop a discipline mind, if they fall in love with the activity and engage deeply and richly with who they are while they’re expressing and learning that pathways certainly something that’s worth cultivating for people. So it’s not a push, it’s a challenge, grounded and support. For a child to get really good at with their wanting to spend time in the environment really matters and the parents are the primary cultivator of the environment. And so as parents what we want to be able to do is support them in a way for them to be able to explore and to go for it. And you know there’s a lot of things that kids can’t figure out on their own and so as parents there tend to be great value in one or two parents that really support the process of becoming and while that seems that it’s really important it’s not necessary. There’s plenty people on the world stage that have had an appetite from a young age or even found themselves you know, in high school or college years that there’s something that they really want to go for themselves. And the beginnings of exploring potential for children is for parents to be able to look and support them and it doesn’t mean that they have to do everything as far as logistics and scheduling and all of that because if the child really wants it they will spend time to figure it out. And I think it’s our job as parents to be able to expand that opportunities for them to cut through some of the red tape that they’re not able to do on their own.

Performance Psychologist Michael Gervais, PhD talks about how to support and challenge your child when they have an innate talent or interest

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Michael Gervais, PhD

High Performance Psychologist

Dr. Michael Gervais, a licensed psychologist and industry visionary, is a founding partner of Pinnacle Performance Center. He focuses most of his time on people at the "top of their game," from NBA players, to Olympians, to military personnel. Dr. Gervais has a clear understanding of how performers become and consistently excel at a world-class level. Spending years in the trenches of high-stakes circumstances, Dr. Gervais has developed clarity for the tools that allow people to "thrive under pressure."

Dr. Gervais is a published, peer-reviewed author and a nationally recognized speaker on issues related to high performance for those who excel on the largest stages in the world.

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