I think we may be failing to teach Sevi how effort can be identified
with pleasure. This isn’t surprising, since it’s a lesson we
ourselves could learn better, or I could certainly. There’s a
negative reinforcing going on, probably here at home, and I’m
guessing it carries over into school. She feels inadequate to a
challenge, so she evades it or laughs it off, clowning it off with an
edgy nonchalance. The fear of more failure leads to disengagement
and increased concern about what other people think of her, which
begins to take over focus and leave her even less mental attention
for concentration for doing well at the matter at hand. I continue
to want to see her engage in some activity that she really takes to,
to see how with effort she can do well at something, even
exceptionally well. This lesson can then naturally color her
approach to other things, opportunities to rise to a challenge that
can be ultimately pleasurable.
Of course a part of me does have a distaste for the aggressive drive
to “excellence” because I feel that imagination can be the first
casualty. But maybe there is no dichotomy here. Imagination is an
appeal to something larger and unknown, a receptivity to it, and
wouldn’t that also flourish with a more confident attitude?