My brother is a marketer. He creates advertisements and websites for companies and organizations.
He has recently worked on an ad campaign for a restaurant. They wanted to spread the word about a new line of smoothies they were selling. He made a beautiful banner with mouth-watering pictures and great punchy copy.
He emailed it to the client. A short while later the client responded, “The banana is missing.”
That was the only feedback he got from the client. No positive comment on his work. Only four words on what was missing.
Here’s the question to us parents: When our child comes home from school with a report card, do we instantly look for what’s missing, or do we first look for what is present?
When our children do their homework or complete an exam, do we reflexively point out the negative?
We might like a banana on our ads. We might like our children to bring home report cards with straight A’s. We don’t always get what we want, however. It’s fine to encourage our children to do better, but it’s not fine to automatically and exclusively point out the negative.
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LOL! banana news spreads fast…
Hi Mendy, I agree with your point, however, I think the example you offer does not do justice, and rather understates the lesson. The reason being, because what your brother was selling was a product and the client may potentially be justified in his response. With children however, we have a responsibility to not just highlight their failures for correction but rather guide them through the process of learning with a healthy sense of self so that we don’t inhibit their potential for future growth. Unlike someone who is attempting to sell a product all we need to do is to highlight all that needs to be corrected so that the product will meet the clients needs. I”m not to say that we shouldn’t strive to inject positivity in all our interaction with others and just trying to point out the difference objectives in both scenarios. Yossi
Thanks for stopping by, Yossi. I often use analogies from real life and rhetorical scenarios to make points about treating, educating and raising children. Your elaboration on the difference between the example and children is well taken.