Fear of failure

Maths is part of the real world. It is taught in schools. Children doing well get praised for it. Children doing badly get to feel that they aren’t good enough. This latter is true however supportive the teacher. The child who has got a sum wrong feels diminished in spite of the teacher saying, “Never mind, this is how you do it, try again”. Why? Because, until adolescence, children are programmed to try and please adults. Also they are very self centred. So instead of taking notice of what adults expect of them, they decide for themselves what would please an adult. These expectations generally start off high, children imagine themselves doing the most ambitious things, and very often the most unrealistically ambitious things. So when they fail to achieve at something that falls well short of their ambitions, when they if they fail to meet something much less than their own expectations (which are way above anything any adult expects of them) they feel failure. Puppet Maths aims to avoid these feelings by taking adults out of the experience of maths. Children know that puppets are an inferior species to themselves. Children have no illusions about trying to impress their toys with their brilliance, they know that their toys are already in awe of them. In this world they are persons of importance, and they know that the puppets know it, so in this world, children are not inhibited by the need to put up a front, to appear confident and capable even when they’re not. They can admit their weaknesses and failings and learn how to address them without losing face. Because puppets are not authority figures, but things which are unthreatening, they make ideal companions for children to learn from. At Puppet Maths we harness this effect to enable children to achieve at maths, and get them home and dry as far as the subject of maths is concerned.