Daisy News
Gordon’s Gems and Guidance
Practicing our Lower School Outcomes at Home: Agency. Wonder. Collaboration. Resilience.
These four values are an important part of our Lower School, but they can easily be fostered at home, too. The good news is that helping your child develop these skills doesn’t require adding extra tasks to your already busy schedule. Everyday life provides plenty of opportunities to practice all four.
AGENCY: Agency means helping children recognize that they have a voice, can make appropriate choices, and can do things for themselves.
- Offer real choices: "Would you like to take a bath before or after dinner?" Both choices should be options you can live with.
- Give your child a responsibility or chore: Feeding the dog, setting the table, or packing their own backpack helps them learn, "I can do this."
- Ask before helping: When your child has a problem, try asking, "What do you think you could do?" before jumping in with a solution.
- Let them speak for themselves: Encourage your child to order at a restaurant, ask a librarian a question, or talk to their teacher when appropriate.
WONDER: Wonder is curiosity in action. It is noticing, questioning, exploring, and wanting to know more.
- Ask a "wonder question" at dinner: "Do you think dogs dream?" or "Why do leaves change color?" There does not have to be a right answer.
- Turn questions back to your child: When they ask "Why?", occasionally respond with, "What do you think?" Let them develop a theory before looking up the answer together.
- Take a "noticing walk": Spend five minutes outside looking for things you have never noticed before.
- Let boredom happen: Before providing entertainment or a screen, give your child time to figure out what to do. Creativity is often born from boredom.
COLLABORATION: Collaboration means learning to work with others, listen to different ideas, contribute, and compromise.
- Cook together: Give everyone a different job and work toward one finished product.
- Give siblings a shared task: "You two are responsible for packing everything we need for the pool."
- Plan something together: Let everyone contribute ideas for a family dinner, movie night, or weekend activity.
- Don't solve every disagreement: Ask, "How can you come up with a plan that works for both of you?"
RESILIENCE: Resilience is the ability to handle mistakes, frustration, disappointment, and challenges—and then keep going.
- Let natural consequences happen: When appropriate, try not to rescue your child from every forgotten item or small mistake.
- Normalize your own mistakes: Say, "Oops, I made a mistake. Let me see how I can fix it."
- Ask, "What could you try next?": Use this question when something doesn't work instead of immediately fixing it yourself.
- Let disappointment be disappointing: Her favorite cereal is gone. His team lost. A friend cannot come over. They didn’t get selected for the part they wanted. You can empathize without fixing it: "I know. That’s disappointing." Then let them work through the feeling.
You certainly do not need to try all of these ideas at once. Pick one or two that fit naturally into your family routine. Perhaps the most important idea connecting all four values is that children need opportunities to do things, think about things, struggle with things, and work through things without adults always taking over. Sometimes, stepping back a little is exactly what allows our children to step forward.
The Hockaday School
Within the private school community, The Hockaday School is an independent college-preparatory day school for girls from grades PK–12 located in Dallas, Texas. Students realize their limitless potential through challenging academic curricula, arts, athletics, and extracurricular programs so that they are inspired to lead lives of purpose and impact.
The Hockaday School does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, national origin, ethnicity, creed, religion, sexual orientation, disability, or any other status protected by applicable law in the administration of its educational, admissions, financial aid, athletic, and other policies and programs.
The Hockaday School does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, national origin, ethnicity, creed, religion, sexual orientation, disability, or any other status protected by applicable law in the administration of its educational, admissions, financial aid, athletic, and other policies and programs.