often do not know what their best is

Hello everyone,

From the book Psychology of Hope by Charles Snyder.

The chapter is about nurturing hope in children and the subchapter is called Pinpointing.

Why are more specific goals helpful to your child? I believe specific goals are beneficial because children can readily comprehend their meaning. Concrete goals give children a clear benchmark for their subsequent efforts. In contrast, the more general do-your-best statements are difficult to understand because children often do not know what their best is.

Does "children often do not know what their best is" mean that children do not know the meaning of the word "best"?

Or does it mean that they do not know how much effort their "best" is?

Thank you.

Here, it just means children do not know what they can actually achieve, and aim towards that. That would be their 'best'.

Michael30000 said:

Why are more specific goals helpful to your child? I believe specific goals are beneficial because children can readily comprehend their meaning. Concrete goals give children a clear benchmark for their subsequent efforts. In contrast, the more general do-your-best statements are difficult to understand because children often do not know what their best is.

Does "children often do not know what their best is" mean that children do not know the meaning of the word "best"?

Or does it mean that they do not know how much effort their "best" is?

Click to expand...

It means the latter, as natkretep says. "Do your best" just means "do as well as you can", which is little more than vague encouragement, and even risks proving a disincentive if the child takes it to imply that their best won’t be good enough but it’s all that can be expected of them. A specific goal, on the other hand, is something that children can relate to and try to achieve.

Michael30000 said:

Hello everyone,

From the book Psychology of Hope by Charles Snyder.

The chapter is about nurturing hope in children and the subchapter is called Pinpointing.

Why are more specific goals helpful to your child? I believe specific goals are beneficial because children can readily comprehend their meaning. Concrete goals give children a clear benchmark for their subsequent efforts. In contrast, the more general do-your-best statements are difficult to understand because children often do not know what their best is.

Does "children often do not know what their best is" mean that children do not know the meaning of the word "best"?

Or does it mean that they do not know how much effort their "best" is?

Thank you.

Click to expand...

Typically one would find the phrase inside quotation marks if the writer wanted to indicate that the phrase itself would not be understood, and it would be expressed using the verb "means", not "is", and the phrase would be exactly as said to them:

Children often do not know what "your best" means.

There are several good reasons why giving children specific goals is more helpful - lingobingo clearly articulates some of them. However, 'In contrast, the more general do-your-best statements are difficult to understand because children often do not know what their best is' strikes me as a somewhat ludicrous statement, and I can see why Michael30000 is puzzled by it. Children [precisely what age we're talking about would be useful contextual information] generally understand quite well what 'do your best' means ; Snyder implies that to understand this they have to firstly understand specifically what achievement they are capable of in the relevant field, so that they can then set that as their target - and this just isn't so. Snyder may well have been an inspirational college teacher, but he wasn't a good writer.