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Anxious Mother: This also applies to parents who are anxious and over-concerned about their child's progress or their own capacity to help. These parents may, however, need some extra help from the teacher. Whereas the so-called 'competitive' or 'pushy' parents will usually have the confidence to help their own child once they know how to do so, the anxious parent may need more support. One anxious mother we met said that her son finds her 'bossy' but sees his grandfather as kind and tolerant, and suggested that surely he would be a better person to hear the child read on a regular basis.
It does not seem unreason-le that the process with human infants would similar. The child who is too fearful to inter-: with the environment will be overly depen-it, whereas the child who is given all the rmth and protection he needs will be eager to ve mother and explore the world. In general, earch with children has indicated that depen-icy is greatest in those children who are re-ted by their mothers. Thus, dependency be-vior is not a consequence of the availability of ; mother, as might be expected from a simple irning point of view, but is rather a consequence of being insecure and anxious as the result of inadequate maternal attention.
But there is less need to feel anxious about meeting a mother who jotted down a cheery 'Thanks for all your help' on a reading card the previous week; or a dad who, on hearing his son read for what one can only suppose was the very first time, simply wrote 'STREWTH!' across the card and became noticeably more appreciative of die work of teachers from that date. It's good to see the faces of the people you've been exchanging wry jokes with on their child's determination to finish every Viking saga ever published; to exchange mutual admiration for a victory joindy won to turn a reluctant reader into an avid bookworm.
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