Children Challenges

Many people try to hide children from the realities of the world or keep them from exploring, out of fear. In the book Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman and the speech Challenge of Our Times by Jonathon Haidt, people, especially children, need to be challenged intellectually and emotionally to grow into the maturity level that the world expects. Children are not going to learn the ways of the world unless adults show them the skills needed to overcome challenges one may face in life. Challenging a child is becoming harder as society has become more sensitive to what is going on in the world and wants to protect children from the horrors of the world. The downside to this is that children are not getting the opportunity to grow or as J.S. Mill put it from Haidt, “When you are not exposed to challenges you get stupid, you get lazy” (Haidt). People need to be challenged especially when in conversations or in school so that one can grow intellectually. If not challenged, then one would be held back from reaching the full potential possible. Gardner by Goleman said that “We should spend less time ranking children and more time helping them to identify their natural competencies and gifts, and cultivate those. There are hundreds and hundreds of

Instead parents protect children from the things deemed unsuitable. Goleman is big on the idea of fueling special abilities in children to increase the emotional and intellectual intelligence of children. If not challenging children, then parents are prohibiting them. Haidt talks a lot about society has changed and because of this change children are not shown how to react to situations or to even have opinions on them. All because parents do not feel that a child should have to be faced with the realities such as death, until older. This type of thinking is wrong as it inhibits children from growing to the maturity level