Your student wants to talk with you. You're flattered to be consulted and eager to help.
Now what do you do?
Here are five mentoring tips, gleaned from my experience as a counselor (as well as a supervisor of various kinds of psychotherapists):
Tip #1: Begin with what you hear and see and feel in your child's presence
There's something amiss in the phrase "just listening." To put yourself aside while you truly listen to others is to give them a precious gift.
Psychologist Leona Tyler wrote: "Counseling is basically a perceptual task. It is not possible to learn to say the right thing at the right time without learning to listen and watch and understand." It is the same for mentoring. Look. Listen. Let curiosity gently move you along.
Despite my desire to serve a helping of wisdom along with my counseling, I can't recall a single instance of praise for my profundity. On the other hand, clients thanked me over and over and over again for listening.
Tip #2: Model patience with the process Offer a contrast to our frenetic culture. Slow down. Conduct your conversation so that your student can hear herself think and begin to heed that small voice inside.
My clients would often tell me that they didn't know what they wanted when they actually did, deep down. Perhaps they were slightly scared to express it out loud, but eventually, because I waited and listened and probed instead of rushing in to offer advice, they would get around to declaring their heart's desire.
Of all the quotes about creativity, my favorite is from Epictetus: "No great thing is created suddenly, any more than a bunch of grapes or a fig. If you tell me that you desire a fig, I answer you that there must be time. Let it first blossom, then bear fruit, then ripen." Developing talent is an equally slow process.
Tip #3: Respect your student's desires
Personal values bring emotion (note the root word motion) into play, and that kind of energy can move entire mountain ranges. So let your daughter know that you respect her values.
One young woman admitted during a counseling session that she wanted to be a good nurse and mother and live in the country where she could raise a big vegetable garden. Then she trembled and hung her head in shame. Her goals didn't fit her parents' values, so she felt as though she had just confessed to something sinful. Hearing my respect for her goals helped her move forward.
Well-meaning friends and family, full of "shoulds," often plaster their own priorities on a young person who already feels vulnerable because her values are at odds with the mainstream (or perhaps simply at odds with her parents). When in dialogue, honor her desires—not your own.
Tip #4: Express confidence in his or her ability
If you believe that your son is capable of doing whatever it is he says he wants to do, then tell him so.
Lawrence Hatterer, a psychotherapist for fine artists in New York City, believed that his single most important contribution was a belief in his client's ability to create. Creative people of all sorts have told me that they were helped by such confirmation. Just one other person who believed in them was enough to strengthen their self-confidence.
I experienced this myself, when I told my sister that I wanted to write fiction for children. She read some of my early efforts and said, "I think you can do it." Sounds simple, but what a boost! Tip #5: Contain your own anxiety
When your student wants to discuss something important, chances are that she will be uncertain and a bit worried. Anxiety is contagious—but don't let her scare you too.
One of my clients had been fired from a prominent position. Already embarrassed by his public demotion, he became panicked by his subsequent lack of success at the job hunt. Fear wafted off of him like bug repellent, which undoubtedly hurt his chances with potential employers. I helped by not becoming scared myself. Once he calmed down, he got the job he wanted and became one of my most grateful clients.
Try to focus on the person instead of her anxiety. In other words, let her feelings be her feelings and attend to her as a whole person. Attending does not mean rushing in to save her from feeling bad. Nor does it mean taking upon yourself the task of making her choices. It means going back to basics, to the starting point of what you hear and see and feel in her presence (see Tip #1).
Rest assured: You can provide information and opinions and emotional support, but you do not need to make decisions. That task belongs to your student. After all, she's the one who must live with the consequences.
I began speculating about my son's strengths when he was still in utero. From the moment he was born, I kept an eagle eye on what he did well, and within a week of his sixteenth birthday, I whisked him off to Chicago for a formal aptitude assessment.
Fortunately, you don't have to be quite such a fanatic. You don't have to spend money, either. One free method for identifying strengths is to observe your child's behavior. In other words, pay attention to what she does better than most kids her age.
Ellen Winner, PhD, a psychology professor and researcher at Boston College, has developed three markers you can use to identify talent via observation. No testing required. Dr. Winner's research has been based on gifted children, but I believe her markers can also be used for the noticeable-if-you-look-for-it kind of talent that places a child or student in the high range of a specific ability. And high ability is plenty 'good enough' for learning quickly, getting a job, and advancing in a career.
Here are Winner's three behavioral markers:
1) Precocity (which means advanced in a specific area)
Let's begin with an extreme example. Carl Gauss, the eminent German mathematician, was a child prodigy. At age 3, he corrected, in his head, a mistake his father made in financial calculations. In grade school, his teacher asked him to add numbers from 1 to 100 in arithmetic progression—a feat he accomplished in mere seconds! At only 21, he wrote his magnum opus on number theory. Two centuries later, his brilliance continues to light the mathematical heavens.
In other words, the talented person often begins to learn about his special subject at a younger age than average. He learns faster and performs better than typical peers. As a result, his skills in his talent area are advanced, even when he's not a genius. For example, the one-year-old who speaks in full sentences, a feat not normally accomplished until the age of two (indicating talent in the area of language). Or the child who can successfully compete on sports teams with children a year or two older (indicating talent in athletics).
2) Rage to Master
Michelangelo, the great Italian artist, possessed an astounding visual-spatial talent that contributed to his success in painting, sculpture, and architecture. But on top of that he focused intensely and labored mightily with his visual gift, so dedicated to mastering his craft that he was willing to spend four years in awkward positions as paint from the Sistine Chapel dripped onto his face. A rage to master refers to strong intrinsic motivation. The talented individual wants to learn, on his own, about how to win a chess game or play the harmonica. Without prodding, without an adult having to coax him with a carrot or strike him with a stick, the child strives to master the skills of his chosen domain. When adults spot such stellar achievement, they may assume there's a pushy parent behind the scenes, but the child with a rage to master actually pushes himself to study maps so he can learn geography.
3) March to their own Drummer
Living in isolation in northern England, in a world without MFA writing programs, the young Bronte sisters taught themselves to write poetry and fiction. Charlotte, Emily, and Anne Bronte created and acted out dramas as children, inventing and sharing personal worlds of fantasy. Later in their lives, when women were actively discouraged from writing books, each of the Bronte sisters adopted a male pen name and wrote one or more novels of unusual passion and lasting artistic merit (including the classics Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall). The talented person does not sit idly by with the mass of her fellows nor rush with them like lemmings into the sea. Rather than follow someone else's set curriculum, she instead takes initiative with her own pet projects, maybe building a Lego construction from her imagination or studying all the different kinds of spider webs she can find in nature. She pursues her own goals in her own idiosyncratic ways.
To mentor talent, keep an eye out for these three markers. Be sure to ask others what they notice in your child. For example, at parent-teacher conferences, ask her teacher:
· "What are my daughter's strengths?"
· "What is she good at?"
· "Have you noticed any areas where she is ahead of other kids her age?"
· "Have you noticed any areas where she shows unusual motivation?
· "In what kind of activities does she march to her own drummer?"
Afterward, tell your child where he or she excels. Remember to remind them of their talents from time to time. Students who know their strengths possess an inner security that's both portable and permanent.
