We’ve previously illustrated how similar situations, when experienced within different cultural contexts, can influence a child differently. Like a plant needing sunlight and water to thrive, a child’s development is heavily influenced by their cultural environment. In cultures where failure is presented as a necessary step on the path to improvement, children are taught to reflect on their mistakes and approach future challenges with renewed determination.
As a result, these children learn that resilience is the ability to bounce back stronger from hardship. On the other hand, some cultures promote the idea that failure reveals an inherent lack of ability. This fixed mindset, which suggests that intelligence is static and unchangeable, becomes deeply ingrained into the child’s identity. This can result in feelings of shame and deep-seated self-doubt when they encounter setbacks like scoring badly for a test.
Convinced that failure confirms the lack of natural intelligence, they become unwilling to exert effort, fearing further damage to their self-esteem. Despite experiencing similar situations, resilience in this context becomes defined as the avoidance of future challenges to protect their self-image, or to strongly defend their identity when challenged.
Self-Doubt and Avoidance in Children
The simple contrast between a growth mindset that effort can improve ability – “It’s amazing how much you’ve improving because of your efforts.” versus the fixed mindset that ability is innate – “If other people can do it, why can’t you?” can determine whether a person develops confidence and resilience or fall into self-doubt and avoidance.
Self-doubt is the lack of confidence in one’s abilities or worth, which can manifest as doubting your choices or fear of failure. It is common for children to question themselves, especially as they are learning new skills or navigating unfamiliar situations. However, when this doubt becomes chronic, it can lead to avoidance behaviors—children might withdraw from difficult tasks, procrastinate or refuse to participate in activities altogether.
These avoidance behaviors often appear when children encounter challenges. They might disengage by walking away, conveniently “forget” things or create obstacles like feigning illness to dodge the task. Children also avoid seeking for help, pretending they understand to hide their struggles and the fear of appearing unintelligent. Instead of building resilience, they cultivate a façade of competence and deflection skills to avoid doing the actual task.
Avoiding tough situations during childhood leads to the development of small comfort zones, increasing their vulnerability to stress, anxiety and fear in the face of discomfort. Similar to children who deflect homework with excuses or diversions, these avoidance tactics frequently transition into the workplace, where adults deliberately choose the path of least resistance.
Instead of being focused on completing their actual work, these adults avoid their responsibilities to participate in a wide variety of low-effort work, such as endless meetings, emails and discussions, generating an illusion of busyness. Behind this smokescreen, these individuals actively look for opportunities to offload their responsibilities onto others. In team environments, they tend to act more as supervisors rather than actively contribute, engaging in numerous tasks and focusing on minor details while avoiding the core work.
Interestingly, some cultures interpret these behaviors as leadership qualities and reward them. Want to know how engagement in learning can create responsible adults? Like and follow for Part 3!
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