We celebrate how smart kids are. Every new word brings rapture to parents and those who have the pleasure of watching them grow. It amazes us to see them pick up skills. Seeing them learn to walk. Listening to them sing off key and out of tune... and slowly they make progress. Year by year they become more and more accomplished.
We apply different standards to ourselves. When learning something new, we are brutal. We expect almost instantaneous results and we get very frustrated. Kids actually learn quite slowly. They get frustrated too. Perhaps two key things they get that we don't give to adults are time and patience. I would love to find a study of how much time a day kids spend learning. Dan quit his job in April 2010 to spend 10,000 hours attempting to become a Pro Golfer. He fast realised that you can't do 10,000 hours of purposeful practice condensed into 5 years. He is about half way now. I would like to find out how many 'core hours' a day we get of real energy. I imagine this is at most 6 hours, more likely 3-4.
As an adult, I don't think you can beat yourself up if you spend a full 8-12 hour day working and then come home and try spend an hour or two learning a new skill (or in some cases even being present). Maybe you get a few of these sessions in a week and then seeing no progress you get frustrated and give up. Kids are time rich. They are also surrounded by cheerleaders.
We can't chirp adults for struggling to pick up skills if they are being asked to run while someone is holding their collar.
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