Persistence

Persistence is a key attribute for people of all ages, but especially young children. They use this skill to power through the many challenges they meet throughout the day. This could be anything from dressing themselves, writing their names, building a tower, or learning to jump rope. While these might seem like simple tasks, it takes a great deal of concentration and tenacity in order to complete the task at hand. It might not turn out exactly as planned at first, but persistence allows the child to continually work towards achieving their goal.

This also is great time for children to learn that mistakes are an important part of the learning process! Finding out the strategies that do not work, help us learn what does!

Case in point: What do you do when your hula hoop gets stuck in a tree?

You could just leave it up there, but then you would have to find something else to play with. So, what’s the next option? You try to figure out how to get it down, right? Maybe simply jumping for it will do the trick.

No such luck. How about throwing another hula hoop to knock it off the branch?

At first, it looks like this strategy isn’t going to work either. What’s worse, you are running the risk of getting a second hula hoop stuck in the very same tree. Just then, without warning, SUCCESS!! The original hula hoops falls to the ground and the crowd goes wild!

Without persistence, the hula hoop would still be stuck in that tree to this very day. But instead, determination and tenacity reign supreme and the hula hoop can be used once again!