Playing for Perseverance
Updated: Jul 18, 2022
Perseverance is a very important quality that we all need to get through life’s difficulties. When things don’t go quite as we planned, as often happens in life, there are times we need to pull ourselves together and keep trying.
It is a quality that is best learned from an early age. But how can we support our children to develop this vital skill? It seems it’s all about trying, getting stuck, not managing, and being seen to fail without giving up. To keep trying. Trying new ideas and testing different possibilities.
In the research done with Aurogames we can observe that children can learn the value of perseverance through our activities. Because the solution is not always obvious, and challenges are given that re just beyond what children are able to do more easily, they are able to focus and push themselves to succeed in their activity.
When they struggle to complete their task they become motivated to try harder, rather than solve easier games and activities more effortlessly. Our studies also show that children learn the importance of effort when they experience the feeling of completing a challenging task.
It is important that children learn resilience to face challenges, and to trust in their own capability to cope when faced with something that is tricky or complex. By working with Aurogames we observe children’s ability to learn self-regulation and self-motivation.
They learn to push themselves towards completing a task and not just seeking immediate pleasure in every step. Even a feeling of discomfort can support a child to keep trying, and then attaining new skills and deepening their ability to understand the problem they are faced with. Facing challenges helps children learn problem solving skills and to become more confident in their skills and abilities.
Although it could seem that self-esteem is built by allowing a child to feel immediate success, we see that it is actually the opposite. When children become accustomed to activities that don’t challenge them, when faced with a difficulty - which is the situation where self esteem is needed – children who have not developed the ability to persevere feel discouraged and show low self esteem.
But by offering children activities that offer instant gratification takes away the opportunity to develop essential skills such as self-regulation and resilience. These skills will only develop if a child is allowed to slowly face more and more challenge. To allow them to persevere by working out tricky new puzzles, Aurogames are designed to offer a step by step progression to always be slightly more challenged.