Did Your Child Fail JAMB? This Is What (Not) To Do
What are you more concerned about? That your child scores 300 in this year’s UTME or that he becomes successful in life?
Your concern as a parent is about your child’s success in life, not in one exam, but most parents unknowingly destroy their children because of one exam, so take this failure as an opportunity to make and not to break your child.
Failing an exam does not make your child a failure, and your belief about this is powerful: you can use this failure to make or break your child.
Failure in a UTME exam is not all that bad; as a parent, it is an opportunity to train your child on failure and getting back from it, and we promise you, this is a training that will ever be more valuable than being the highest scorer.
In the university, we met many people who scored high in JAMB, but after a poor result or two, (which could be blamed on the universities’ poor management systems) they gave up and their grades started getting really poor. Some of them even struggled to graduate at the end of the day.
Why? Because they never had the opportunity to learn how to deal with failure.
Failure is an opportunity for your child to grow, to prepare for the necessities and toughness of life; a child who fails and picks himself up after that is in fact more enviable than one who never fails.
This is because naturally, failure will come in life, things will not always go their way, and they need to learn the art of getting back up.
You need to understand that failure is not the opposite of success. Failure is only a necessary stop on the way to success, if you manage it right.
Here are 5 things to avoid when reacting to your child’s poor performance
1.Blame
Sometimes, only a single word changes the impact of a whole conversation. Telling your child, “if you had prepared better, you would have done better” leaves the child mulling over his failure, and feeling down from it. The reality is, this will do him no good.
Moreover, the Prophet has advised us to not say “if only, if only” over things that have passed.
What you should do instead, is to talk about the future and say, “if you avoid social media this time, and you make neat daily plans, I believe you will do better” This leaves the child with a new level of hope and readiness to work, unlike blaming a result that has gone, that only increases weakness and lowers their desire to start preparation.
2. Shaming/ Insult
Resorting to shaming and insulting your child may make him do better in next year’s UTME, but he will not do better in life. He will be scared of failure in his life because of the mental degradation he has experienced from it.
And if you do not know what it means to be scared of failure, it means your child will prefer to not try out new experiences for fear of failing; it means he will be scared of innovating, of breaking boundaries, just for the fear of failing.
3. Comparison
Again, comparing your child to other children might make him do better in the next UTME, but will you be proud of a child who feels inferior to his friends wherever they are?
Comparing your children and belittling them because of failure would leave them with a damaged sense of self-worth, and there is no way it will not come back to hunt the parents too.
What You Should Do Instead When Your Child Fails
1. Discuss the reason behind the failure
Tomas Edison only reached his potential after being sent out of school? Why? He had different interests.
Do not assume the reason for your child’s failure, and do not suggest reasons, have a calm and honest discussion, and ask your child to list the reasons he felt he failed.
They might mention a lack of interest, and this will open the door to a whole new conversation about their interests and you might quite easily unlock your child’s highest potential through their failure.
They might admit that they truly did not prepare enough, and that will open the door to easy discipline; if they admit they did not study enough and you say, “in that case, I think I should help you by ensuring you stay off social media for 3 months.” It will be easier upon the child because they feel you are working towards the same goal and not just you punishing them.
2. Point Out Mistakes
We do not say that you should buy your child a pack of chocolates for failing, no! We believe you should point out mistakes, but in a positive manner.
Do not point out the mistakes when you are angry, your anger will cloud the whole impact and your child will focus on your anger instead of picking his mistakes.
So point out the mistakes in relation to their next preparation, not by blaming their last failure on it.
3. Draw A Plan
When you point out the mistakes in the failure, then make a neat plan with the child to avoid the mistakes.
If spending too much time on social media was a problem, you might decide they would only get their mobile phone for an hour a day. If not having enough resources is a problem, you might seek help from educators; and other problems with their respective solutions too.
4. Show support
But how and why would I show support to a child who has just failed an exam? Because you care about his future not just the exam.
Showing support does not mean you do not discipline, does not even mean you do not punish positively, it simply means you do everything while showing that you are on her side, that you trust her potential, that you are certain that if you work it out together she would achieve some of the best results. That is support.
Support does not mean you do not seize your child’s phone, it means, you do not take it while telling her about her mates, it means you take it while you tell her, “I believe you’re such a brilliant girl, you just need a bit more focus, and I think you’d get that without the distraction of the phone”
5. Set rewards and punishments for the process not the result
Do not wait until the next exams before praising or pointing out mistakes in your child’s preparation. Let it be a process, maybe weekly, maybe monthly.
Assess them to know how far they have gone and how much is left. Point out the mistakes they made last week and ask them for a plan to avoid it this week. Do not wait until the results are out before pointing out mistakes and making plans to avoid them.
6. Dua
Make supplications for your children throughout the preparation process, for the supplication of the parent is not rejected.
Use the opportunity to also teach them about the fragility of our lives, our hopes, our ambitions: how these things can be easily destroyed within the least time. And then teach them about reliance on Allah and the necessity of trying to please him at all times so he would also fashion our lives in a way that pleases us.
Naas Educators are a team of teachers, homeschoolers, and educators volunteering to raise awareness about the right approach to Muslim parenting, teaching kids and homeschooling.
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