Sticks and stones…

‘Can I read my poem out?’ She asks me. ‘Yesterday you said I could, but then I didn’t get to.’

I can see that she is really proud of it. We wrote poems together yesterday and the children came up with some lovely sentences. Not Keats or anything, but lovely, none the less. She had wanted to take hers home so she copied it onto some scrap paper and folded it tightly to put in her bag and take home.

’I showed my Dad and he told me that it’s not a very good poem.’ She pauses.

‘He said it’s just like a standard poem. He said that I should have used the rainbow line first, then the line about the bells should go at the end and that the line about smelling dinner cooking should be later on in the poem.

She pauses again and then quietly..

‘He said it’s just not a very good poem.’

I looked at her face, the 9 year old in front of me, and at the crumpled piece of scrap paper that she had written her poem on and then folded, unfolded and folded again nervously revisiting the thing she was so pleased with. Trying to see what her Dad meant. She was crest fallen. Recanting her father’s feedback had hit her hard and her bottom lip quivered a little.

‘Hmm…’ I make a show of pondering a bit.

‘I’m afraid I don’t agree Phoebe. I was with you on the walk. I heard those things and smelled those smells, and I think you have captured it perfectly.’ I pause and her face brightens.

‘So now you have two reviews of your work. Shall we see what everyone else thinks?’

She nods enthusiastically. Her class mates listen carefully to her reading of the poem after the register and she beams with pride as she soaks up the applause. They were on the walk too. They appreciated the rainbow, and the dinner smells, and the bells….

How could anyone say that to a nine year old? I couldn’t believe that she would have been any less proud of her work when she showed her Dad, so how could he not see that? I felt so sad to think of her showing him and having all the wind taken out of her sails by his analysis.

The saying ‘Sticks and stones may break your bones, but words can never harm me’ was a well meant phrase when I was growing up. It was intended to help children to be resilient in the occasion of someone at school saying something unkind. I always thought that it didn’t make sense - words can be the most hurtful of things and the wounds last a lot longer than bruises.

We often feel we have to say something constructive when our children show us their work. I’s worth noting that they will only bring home or show you things that they are proud of and which are meaningful to them.

I am all for hanging work up even when children are in secondary school. Showing you are proud of them has a lasting effect and is always worth the fridge space! You don’t need to say anything at all other than ‘I can see how proud you are of your work! That makes me very happy. Shall we stick it on the fridge?’