For me, maintaining a child's natural enthusiasm for learning is a parenting essential and it definitely helps if we pay attention to how we present new learning situations to them.

It can work against our children's ability to learn if we give them the impression that a new task is intrinsically difficult. For example, we might say something like, "I know this is hard to understand, but try your best anyway."

These are words that can suggest to them they would do well to anticipate failure or a poor performance - or least a lot of very hard work.

However, it's equally unhelpful to give our children the impression that a new task is intrinsically easy. For example, by saying something like, "Oh, this is really simple. You'll sail through it."

Words such as these can suggest to them that, if they don't find it simple, it's because they're not clever enough or something similarly damaging to their self-esteem.

Any new learning situation is nothing more than what it is.

There's no such thing as a "difficult situation" or an "easy situation", only a situation that we personally find difficult or easy.

What we find difficult, another person could find easy. What we find easy, another person could find difficult. We all have our individual interests, preferences, talents, skills and aptitudes and these all come into play when we learn.

And, anyway, the future hasn't happened yet.

If we're going to make judgements on our children's behalf about what might happen in situations that are new to them, we ought to at least make sure that they're honest judgements and not coloured by false assumptions or by our own past experiences, either negative or positive.

Far better to be neutral about the situation itself and pay attention to helping our children develop their potential for dealing successfully in their own way with whatever new situation they encounter.

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Credits: Bob Collier