Daughters doing GCSE’s: three down, one current, one to go. Bloody exams. Learning by rote. Mind maps. Another new syllabus. Stress. As a parent I have got very used to the saying, ‘do your best’. It’s not my place to add pressure, it’s my job to be the support team – the one who offers sympathy and comfort food. All I am asking of my daughters is that they give it their best shot. That they don’t let themselves down by a lack of planning. They all have differing abilities. They are all leading very different lives under the same roof, but this one expectation fits all: do your best.
In my Taekwon-do teaching, particularly when a grading is imminent for a student or a competition, I will also tell them to, ‘do their best’. Across their entire Taekwon-do journey, I want them to ‘be their best’. It’s such a personal journey and one that should not be compared with another student’s.
As humans, we are hard-wired to compare. It’s completely natural and yet deep down we know that on the whole it is unhelpful and irrelevant. As parents we are generally at our comparing worst. We find ourselves doing it, even if we’re not voicing it, we’re thinking it. Sometimes I have parents apologetically approaching me and asking why one student is grading and their child isn’t, when to the parent their standard looks the same. I don’t blame the parent for asking what others are probably thinking. As I said, it’s natural and therefore entirely understandable.
Yet what also needs to be understood is encapsulated within the context of that phrase: ‘be your best’.
There is no Taekwon-do ‘type’ that everyone has to conform to in order to progress. I have been teaching Taekwon-do for nearly 30 years and throughout that time I have taught naturals and unnaturals, disabled and able-bodied. Special needs students. Males and females, young and old. There are no barriers to any of these students progressing. Their journey, their goals.
On paper, just like the GCSE’s and other exams, progression to the next belt is the fulfillment of specific criteria. But just as it is with people sitting public exams, amongst the candidates there is a plethora of differences. A whole host of different things going on in their lives, in their bodies and in their minds and these things aren’t always visible.
I truly believe that it is the job of the examiner and teacher to take these differences and guide each individual student along their own path. This path is the one that is allowing them to, ‘be their best’. Not compared to the student who stands next to them in class. Not compared to the student they watched nailing a pattern on You Tube, or winning gold at a competition.
‘Their best’ is different to these people’s best. Not necessarily better, not necessarily worse, but that isn’t what actually matters. It’s just different.
So as parents and teachers I think that it is important to remind ourselves that whilst it is quite normal to compare, it is ultimately irrelevant. Because if we truly believe in the mantra, ‘be your best’, then we truly believe that the journey is personal and that it is this individualism that actually makes life so great.