From the Headmaster - Pursuing personal best by setting high expectations

High expectations is helping a young person reach their potential……to be their best; high pressure is expecting a young person to be the best.

Undoubtedly, it is a fine line. It’s obviously important to have expectations, because if you have no expectations then people don’t strive for things. High expectations can have a significant impact on a young person’s attitude and self-worth, as well as a likely increase in their motivation levels and self-confidence.

So, if high expectations help young people to feel confident and capable, what are some key strategies that we as parents can adopt to reduce pressure on our children whist maintaining high expectations:

1. Adopt a Growth Mindset.

With a growth mindset, a young person will have high expectations of the effort that goes into study and learning, while a fixed mindset may put high pressure on getting consistently top marks.

We can support a growth mindset in young people by emphasising the importance of hard work — the key to better outcomes, and also as something of value in and of itself.

2. Make expectations clear, realistic and reasonable.

Many young people become overwhelmed by pressure because they don’t know exactly what is expected of them. As parents, we want our children to do well at school… but what does this mean?

To top the class? Or to acquire knowledge and skills?

It is important to set achievable expectations for children and make sure they know exactly what they are, and how you expect them to achieve them.

This again places the focus on the processes, rather than outcomes.

3. Aim for personal bests and fulfilled potential.

Not every child can get into the top sporting team. Nor can every student top the class.

But they can still play sport, improve and even excel.

It is reasonable and beneficial to expect fulfilled potential, but putting high pressure on numbers and ranks can be unproductive, and often detrimental.

4. Let them make mistakes.

Young people might seek out help with their assignments, and this is entirely acceptable, but it’s important to remember that young people are expected to be competent enough to independently fulfil all of their school-set obligations.

By helping them too much, we can send the message that our expectations are low, and that they can’t meet those set by their teacher. Even if they do struggle, ‘setbacks’, in its many forms, is an inevitable part of life.

We must remember that our children grow to be motivated by their mistakes, to discover where they went wrong, and to strive to fix them in the future – on their own.

5. Offer support and encouragement through the process.

Let children know we have faith in their ability, that we believe they are confident and capable, and that importantly, hard work is what’s needed to get good results.

Offer them whatever emotional and practical support you can in order to achieve their goals. This could mean offering them a sympathetic ear when they’re feeling stressed, or listening to them go over what they learnt in school over dinner.

However, it’s important to be restrained with both reassurance and praise in the face of disappointment. For example, praising a child to comfort them over a disappointing outcome may send the wrong message… not only can it suggest you have low expectations, it may negate the impact of genuine praise.

And reassurance in times of upset can be similarly problematic; it can suggest that you have a lack of confidence — and therefore low expectations — of your child’s ability, and it can be an ‘easy out’ from addressing setbacks head-on as learning experiences.

All in all, the best emotional and practical support we can offer children is during the process, not after the outcome.

And one of the best ways we can support children, boost their confidence, and increase their motivation, is to have high expectations.