There are a number of reasons why a child does not use a skill in real life which he has supposedly “mastered” in therapy. I have previously argued that one commonly overlooked reason is that the skill wasn’t fluent enough to be useful. I think that is true, but I’ve discovered it can sometimes lead us to think too narrowly about how good someone has to be at a particular skill in order for it to be useful.
When I was in high school, I entered the New York State High School Championship in Chess and won 1st place. I have a trophy and everything. Now, to put my achievement in perspective, there was a masters level division, but I didn’t compete in that division. There was also a Class A Players (Experts) division, but I didn’t compete in that division either. Same with Class B, C, and D. I won first place in the E division.
To summarize, out of all the kids in the state who were the worst players on their respective teams, I won first place. My high school didn’t even have a team or a coach. I was self-motivated and went as the only representative from my school. Now, by any objective standard, I wasn’t a very good player. Isn’t it unusual to be self-motivated when you aren’t very good at a skill? Still, all of us E-division players had an enjoyable hobby.
In my view, the key factor that allows E-division-level players to enjoy chess is that our skills are “good enough.” If we struggled to remember how the pieces moved, or didn’t understand the basics of strategy, we would be bored to death. It actually takes a fair amount of practice to get to the minimal level necessary for the game to be interesting. Now, more than 35 years later, I even have a high appreciation of dramatic TV shows about chess due to my understanding of the game.
Sometimes, we give up teaching skills too easily. We tried teaching him drawing, bike riding, robotics, or Connect Four, and he didn’t like it. Sure, maybe the child just doesn’t like that activity. But there is a fairly high probability that he or she just didn’t learn enough skills to appreciate why the activity is interesting.
We often teach skills to fairly low levels and expect them to generalize. That rarely works. You need to teach skills to the “good enough” level to be useful, which will be more likely to lead to the child developing a natural interest in the activity that will persist over time. It is easy to be discouraged looking at the high levels of skill that the other children have, and to think this will be impossible. Remembering that the child doesn’t have to be great, just good enough that the activity is fun, is often more than enough for the child to use skills outside of therapy.