Page 6 - Education Supplement August Edition 2023

My Square Peg By Val Van der Berg

Parenting a child who does not fit the conventional mould, can be very difficult.
In today’s hyper-competitive educational landscape, it’s easy for parents to
measure their child’s worth solely by their academic achievements.

o, what do you do if your child is a Reality Bites Trying to make her conform to the “round
square peg trying to fit into a round hole” made her incredibly anxious and
Shole? How do you not fall into the I personally experienced this with my unhappy. She was crippled by her anxiety,
trap of getting your child to “fit in”? oldest daughter when she was in primary and the smile and laughter that she once
school. I had frantically put her name had, disappeared. Every morning the
As parents, we often need to recognise down for a very sought-after school, when trip to school was filled with me trying
that the problem might not be the square she was only four months old, only for to distract her from her worries about
peg, but rather the round hole. If the that environment to break her by the time the day ahead, and her trying to hold in
environment were different, your child she was six. Even though she was very her tears and “be brave”. I can still hear
could blossom and become the best conscientious and academically strong, that disapproving voice from the school
version of themselves. As parents, we she was emotionally sensitive. I had secretary phoning me (for the hundredth
need to recognise this, and find the right not realised yet that she was a “square time) to tell me that my daughter was in
environment for our child instead of trying peg” (and only years later, I came to the the sick bay (again) and that I needed to
to change them so that they conform. realisation, that I too, was a “square peg”). come to fetch her.

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