{"id":2713,"date":"2026-06-15T12:06:47","date_gmt":"2026-06-15T06:36:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/chireveti.com\/?p=2713"},"modified":"2026-06-15T12:06:51","modified_gmt":"2026-06-15T06:36:51","slug":"why-are-we-surprised-when-children-are-capable","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chireveti.com\/pl\/why-are-we-surprised-when-children-are-capable","title":{"rendered":"Dlaczego jeste\u015bmy zaskoczeni, gdy dzieci s\u0105 zdolne?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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What if children are far more capable than we give them credit for?<\/em><\/p>\n

Drawing from years of classroom observations, motherhood, and everyday encounters with young children, this article explores a curious contradiction: adults say they want independent, resilient children, yet often step in before those qualities have a chance to grow. Through real stories, humor, and honest reflection, it invites readers to reconsider what children can do when we trust them a little more and rescue them a little less.<\/em><\/p>\n

There are certain questions that arrive quietly and then refuse to leave.<\/p>\n

This is one of them.<\/p>\n

Why are we so surprised when children are capable?<\/strong><\/h4>\n

Not exceptionally capable. Ordinarily capable. The ability to fetch a pencil, solve a small problem, wait for a turn, recover from a fall, wash a cup, carry a plate, reach a toy, pull down trousers before using the toilet, or find a solution when something does not go according to plan.<\/p>\n

None of these things sound particularly remarkable when written down, yet I have repeatedly found myself in situations where adults seemed genuinely astonished by them.<\/p>\n

My confusion may come from growing up in a different place. It may come from becoming a mother before I became an educator. Or maybe it comes from a habit that has followed me throughout life. I have never been very good at accepting something simply because everyone else appears comfortable with it. If something does not make sense to me, I tend to keep observing until it does. Sometimes that process takes years.<\/p>\n

My own children grew up in a home where independence was not a philosophy, a parenting approach, or a developmental goal. It was simply part of daily life. If water spilled, you cleaned it. If you could not reach something, you found a way. Usually this involved dragging a stool across the room with impressive determination and absolutely no concern for furniture. If a toy was sitting on a shelf beyond reach, a solution emerged. If a zipper refused cooperation, negotiations began. If shoelaces became tangled, they remained tangled until somebody figured them out.<\/p>\n

Nobody called these learning experiences. They were simply life.<\/p>\n

Looking back, I do not remember spending much time wondering whether my children were capable. They generally assumed they were, and because they assumed they were, they usually tried. Sometimes they succeeded immediately. Sometimes they failed. Sometimes they invented solutions that were so creative they bordered on alarming. But they tried.<\/p>\n

That may be why I became increasingly curious later when I encountered situations where children seemed to be waiting for adults to solve problems they were perfectly capable of solving themselves.<\/p>\n

Years ago, a child approached me in the classroom and announced:<\/p>\n

“Ma’am, pencil.”<\/em><\/p>\n

“Ma’am is not a pencil,”<\/em> I replied.<\/p>\n

The class laughed.<\/p>\n

The child looked at me patiently and tried again.<\/p>\n

“My pencil broke. I need a pencil.”<\/em><\/p>\n

“Then go and get one.”<\/em><\/p>\n

The child walked over, collected a pencil, and returned.<\/p>\n

Problem solved.<\/p>\n

The mystery was never the child. The mystery was the adults. The child adapted to the situation within seconds. Some adults looked at me as though I had just refused emergency medical treatment.<\/p>\n

The pencil knew where the pencil was. The child knew where the pencil was. I knew where the pencil was. Yet somehow there occasionally seemed to be an expectation that I should personally retrieve it.<\/p>\n

Again and again, I noticed these moments. A child standing beside a sink waiting for help turning on a tap they could easily reach. A child waiting outside a bathroom because nobody had yet arrived to pull down perfectly manageable trousers. A child waiting for somebody else to solve a problem that had already presented itself with several possible solutions.<\/p>\n

What fascinated me was that the children themselves rarely appeared bothered by the expectation that they could do these things. The adults often were.<\/p>\n

There were moments when I genuinely wondered whether I was the strange one. Years of observation were telling me one thing, while some of the expectations around me appeared to be suggesting another. I occasionally found myself caught between what seemed natural to me and what seemed expected of me as a teacher. At times I felt as though some people expected teachers to become a curious combination of educator, personal assistant, waiter, courier service, and emergency response team for every minor inconvenience a child encountered. The children, meanwhile, often solved the problem the moment they were given permission to try (or more accurately, the time, space, and opportunity to try for themselves)..<\/p>\n

One of the most revealing moments had nothing to do with pencils, shoes, sinks, or toilets.<\/p>\n

I was speaking with a parent after school when her child repeatedly interrupted our conversation.<\/p>\n

The parent smiled and said:<\/p>\n

“He is like this only.”<\/em><\/p>\n

I smiled and turned towards the child.<\/p>\n

“I hear you. Right now I am talking to your mother. When I finish, it will be your turn.”<\/em><\/p>\n

The child interrupted again.<\/p>\n

I repeated myself.<\/p>\n

The child interrupted once more.<\/p>\n

I repeated myself again.<\/p>\n

Eventually the child waited.<\/p>\n

What surprised me was not that the child learned to wait. What surprised me was how quickly adults accepted the idea that the child could not.<\/p>\n

One of the more curious discoveries was how often children seemed willing to become whatever adults quietly believed them capable of becoming. Children who were expected to wait generally learned to wait. Children trusted with responsibility usually found ways to carry it. Children invited to solve problems often did exactly that, sometimes with more creativity than the adults who doubted them.<\/p>\n

Years later, some of those same parents would laugh while telling me stories about their children informing family members:<\/p>\n

“Please wait. I am speaking now.”<\/p>\n

Children absorb far more than we realize.<\/p>\n

Adults have a rather charming tendency to assume that learning only occurs when an adult is visibly involved.<\/strong> Some of the most important learning happens while nobody is paying attention. Children learn while carrying, climbing, searching, negotiating, waiting, reaching, arguing, solving, failing, recovering, and trying again. By the time adults notice a skill, the child has often been practicing it quietly for weeks.<\/p>\n

One of my favorite memories involves a little boy who was running enthusiastically across a playground and fell onto a surface covered with small stones. The fall hurt. Nobody questioned that. The scratches were impressive enough to satisfy any adventurous four-year-old.<\/p>\n

We took him to the nurse. The wounds were cleaned. The parents were informed. The child cried for a while. Then he went back to playing.<\/p>\n

The part that stayed with me was not the fall. Children fall. The part that stayed with me was how quickly life continued.<\/p>\n

Nobody turned the event into a crisis. Nobody treated the child as fragile. Nobody transformed a painful experience into an identity.<\/p>\n

Something happened.<\/p>\n

The child dealt with it.<\/p>\n

Life continued.<\/p>\n

What I found increasingly amusing was that many of the qualities adults admire most seem to arrive disguised as things adults dislike. Persistence rarely announces itself in an attractive form. More often it arrives looking suspiciously like delay. Problem-solving frequently resembles struggle. Responsibility has an unfortunate habit of appearing inefficient. Independence often looks inconvenient. Resilience frequently looks suspiciously similar to allowing a child to recover from an experience without immediately rescuing them from every uncomfortable feeling attached to it.<\/p>\n

Maybe that is why we interrupt these processes so often. Not because children cannot do these things. Sometimes because we are rushed. Sometimes because we are impatient. Sometimes because watching somebody struggle is far more uncomfortable than solving the problem for them.<\/p>\n

The irony is difficult to ignore.<\/p>\n

It is one of the more curious contradictions of modern childhood that we spend considerable time discussing confidence, resilience, responsibility, and independence while becoming increasingly uncomfortable with the experiences through which these qualities are usually acquired.<\/p>\n

It also occurred to me that adults occasionally enjoy giving impressive names to things children have been practicing quite successfully for generations. A child searching for a missing pencil was learning something. A child waiting for a turn was learning something. A child carrying a cup, solving a disagreement, figuring out how to reach a toy, or recovering from a disappointment was learning something.<\/p>\n

Nobody called it executive functioning at the time.<\/p>\n

It was simply called life.<\/p>\n

Looking back, I am not convinced that most children lack independence. I suspect many simply lack opportunities to practice it. Children are often capable long before adults are willing to believe they are. There is a significant difference between the two.<\/p>\n

After all these years, I am still not entirely sure when childhood became such a supervised activity. I am not suggesting that children should be left entirely to their own devices, nor am I advocating a return to some imaginary golden age that was probably far less perfect than memory likes to claim.<\/p>\n

I remain quietly fascinated by how often adults are surprised by capabilities children never doubted they possessed.<\/p>\n

I sometimes wonder whether independence is something we teach nearly as often as we imagine. It may simply emerge when capable children are given enough time, enough trust, and enough space to discover what they can do.<\/p>\n

The most curious thing of all may be that children often seem to know this long before we do.<\/p>\n

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\u00a0<\/p> <\/div>\n<\/div>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Im wi\u0119cej czasu sp\u0119dza\u0142em z dzie\u0107mi, tym cz\u0119\u015bciej zastanawia\u0142em si\u0119, dlaczego doro\u015bli tak cz\u0119sto dziwi\u0105 si\u0119 rzeczom, kt\u00f3re dla mnie wydawa\u0142y si\u0119 zupe\u0142nie normalne. Nie chodzi\u0142o o to, czy dzieci s\u0105 do tego zdolne. Chodzi\u0142o o to, kiedy przestali\u015bmy tego od nich oczekiwa\u0107.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2718,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[102,758,444,180,759,72,105,270,381],"class_list":["post-2713","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-everyday-life-humor","tag-child-development","tag-child-independence","tag-confidence","tag-early-years-education","tag-executive-functioning","tag-parenting","tag-play-based-learning","tag-preschool-education","tag-resilience","has-post-title","has-post-date","has-post-category","has-post-tag","has-post-comment","has-post-author",""],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t