P-5 News

Years 3-6 Athletics 

On Wednesday the Years 3-6 Athletics Carnival was held at USC. The standard of competition and the spirit displayed by all students was outstanding. Special thanks to those parents who acted as officials, provided food to students and staff and supported their children at the Carnival. Special thanks also to Mr Hooper and Mrs Campbell who coordinated the event and all the staff who help set up the track and supervise on the day. 

P-2 Cross Country

This term all students in Years Prep-2 have been busily training for the P-2 Interhouse Cross Country which will be held on Wednesday June 20th starting at 1.40pm. A letter giving details of the event was sent home this week and all details are available on CareMonkey. All parents are warmly invited to come along and support their children’s participation in the event.

Emotional Resilience

Emotional resilience is essential to help deal with the daily confrontations with difficult people, making wrong choices, getting bad results, encountering negative situations that are beyond our control and struggling with day to day things that are boring, difficult or what we consider a waste of time.

As adults we generally face such difficulties with varying levels of resilience. Teaching children the skills to support the development of resilience is an important facet of growth and development.

Negative Habits of Mind greatly fuel emotional discomfort. These negative habits of mind include self-downing, the need to be perfect, the need for approval, the “I can’t do it” or “I can’t be bothered” mindset and being intolerant of others.  This week I would like to continue to share some strategies from the You Can Do It Program which may help eliminate or help to balance these negative mindsets.

Needing to be perfect is another negative habit of mind which can be detrimental to a child developing resilience.

To Eliminate ‘Needing to Be Perfect’

Explain to your child that one of the greatest mistakes he/she can make is being afraid to make mistakes.  Explain that mistakes are a natural part of learning, and that while it is good to do the best you can in your work, it is not helpful to insist that everything is done perfectly.  Explain that even the greatest scientists and inventors bumble and stumble their way to success.  For older children, you can also explain that demanding perfection of oneself leads one to be so worried that it lessens one’s ability to perform well.  Encourage your child to develop the positive type of thinking called ‘Risk Taking.’  In ‘Risk Taking,’ a person prefers to do his/her best but accepts that mistakes are inevitable and frequently important as one is learning something new.

Other suggestions for eliminating your child’s need to be perfect include the following:

•  Help your child become more aware of his/her perfectionism and its negative effects on his/her anxiety.
• Have your child make a list of the things he/she always wanted to do but was afraid of not doing perfectly.  Encourage your child to agree to try one of these activities.
•  Encourage your child to identify areas of weakness.  Have him/her agree to try activities in these areas.  When he/she has attempted such an activity, point out that he/she now has   evidence that he/she can tolerate doing things imperfectly.
• Encourage your child to stop ruminating about grades and, instead, to get involved in activities unrelated to school.
•  Teach your child that there is a continuum of achievement and that achievement is not an all (perfection) or nothing (complete failure) outcome.  Encourage him/her to set goals at a place on the achievement continuum where he/she does not have to be the best in order to learn something and have fun.
•  Acknowledge and praise your child for attempting things and not doing them perfectly.

Mr David Druery, Head of Staff and Students P-5