As stated in my initial response to the podcast which discussed Daniel Kish, I was very interested in the idea that how we perceive things can alter how things develop. Towards the end of the broadcast, it was revealed that Kish's most challenging foe is love: that parents, teachers, friends and family members are his greatest challenge because they sometimes hinder a child's ability to learn for themselves. Although Kish focuses his efforts on those who are visually impaired, what he says is true about all children: if a parent is overprotective because they fear for their child's safety, they sometimes keep their child from experiencing something that would benefit their character overall. It is his belief that setting the bar of expectations low or high for a child will yield one or the other as a result. Kish's idea can be refuted; many children rise to greatness from nothing and with virtually no one to support them. However, society's expectations of children with any sort of disability (even the name "disability" has a negative connotation) effects how children see themselves and how they challenge themselves in life.
By expecting a child to do well, the child is pushed to do more. They're told that doing more will better themselves and their chances of success; sometimes they are pressured by family and friends, sometimes they want to better themselves, and sometimes they want to please those who are expecting them to do well. As a high school student myself, I often am held to a high standard by those around me. I come from a family of hard-working individuals, who until my parent's generation dropped out before high school in order to help their families financially or take care of younger siblings while their parents worked hard jobs. Now however, with times changing, schooling (especially college) is required to get any well-paying job, and a high school diploma is needed for most of the lowest paying opportunities: my family understands this, and so they strongly encourage me to do my best in all aspects at school. I take what advanced classes I can and plan to go to college: I know that my parents, my teachers, and my friends expect me to. Although I want to advance in school for myself, the expectations set by those around me also push me towards my goals. I don't want to let those that care about me down, and I know that I'm expected to do more because I am able to do more. Through their expectations I find myself pushing myself harder and becoming stronger for it. If I wasn't held to the standards that I am personally, I'm not sure that I would work as hard.
My little cousin is taking a different path: my aunt never places extremely high expectations on him, and allowed him to do as he wanted if she wasn't doing it for him. Now that he's older, he gets by with doing as little as he possibly can, and he's told me several times that if he didn't have to be in school he wouldn't be. This sort of attitude is strange to me, especially since the two of us are close and I've seen how skilled he is in several things. I understand that other people's expectations don't always effect how people turn out, but I feel as though if my little cousin had more people telling him that he could do more and he should do more simply because he can, he would.
My personal experiences are why I believe that high expectations lead to beneficial results (at least in some cases). Daniel Kish was treated like any other boy: he was expected to explore, have fun, and get hurt, which he did. As he got older, he started helping others with vision impairments by showing them that they too were expected to challenge themselves. As Kish explained, love can be the biggest challenge for families to overcome: it forces those who are meant to love and care for their children most to take a step back and allow room for their child's personal growth. In this way high expectations can yield higher than expected results for children; the difficulty comes with finding the balance between expecting a child to push themselves and expecting too much.
