Struggling with new skills is a universal experience, often leading to discouragement. The discussion highlights how critical encouragement is, especially for children navigating their own challenges. By comparing personal growth to bamboo and ice cubes, we learn that progress often happens beneath the surface before any visible success emerges. Fathers play a pivotal role in helping children recognize their incremental achievements, fostering resilience and a growth mindset for future endeavors.
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The Plateau of Latent Potential
Every new skill has a "pain period," and often people give up due to a lack of encouragement or visible progress.
This is a costly cognitive error, similar to James Clear's "Plateau of Latent Potential."
question_answer ANECDOTE
Bamboo and Ice Cube Analogy
Bamboo takes five years to build root systems before rapidly growing 90 feet.
An ice cube melts at 32 degrees and water boils at 212 degrees, illustrating thresholds.
volunteer_activism ADVICE
Encouraging Kids
Encourage your kids and help them see their progress, even if it's small.
Manage their expectations and show them why their efforts matter, even if it doesn't seem like it.
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Atomic Habits by James Clear provides a practical and scientifically-backed guide to forming good habits and breaking bad ones. The book introduces the Four Laws of Behavior Change: make it obvious, make it attractive, make it easy, and make it satisfying. It also emphasizes the importance of small, incremental changes (atomic habits) that compound over time to produce significant results. Clear discusses techniques such as habit stacking, optimizing the environment to support desired habits, and focusing on continuous improvement rather than goal fixation. The book is filled with actionable strategies, real-life examples, and stories from various fields, making it a valuable resource for anyone seeking to improve their habits and achieve personal growth[2][4][5].
We’ve all done it. It’s happened to almost all of us. We see a thing. We want to try it. It’s hard. And…we give up. Whether it’s karate, business, piano, reading, learning another language...every new skill has a “pain period” and, most of the time, we never get over it.
Because we lack encouragement or any visible progress, we quit. In a way, this is a kind of costly cognitive error. In his book Atomic Habits, James Clear talks about something he calls “The Plateau of Latent Potential.” This plateau can be likened to bamboo, which spends its first five years building extensive root systems underground before exploding ninety feet into the air within six weeks. Or to an ice cube, which will only begin to melt once the surrounding temperature hits thirty-two degrees (or the resulting water that only boils at two hundred and twelve degrees).
Just because it sometimes takes longer than we’d like to see the results of our efforts doesn’t mean that our efforts are going to waste. In fact, most of the important work—the build up—won’t seem like it’s amounting to anything, but of course it is. We struggle with realizing this as adults...so imagine being a kid. They’ve never experienced the elation of suddenly breaking through that plateau. They don’t even have enough experience to understand the bamboo analogy!
Which makes this a key area for a dad to exert important influence. You have to keep encouraging them. You have to help them see even the microscopic progress they’re making. You have to help manage their expectations. It might not seem like doing this piece of homework or trying hard in practice matters. It might not seem like any of it is making a difference, but you can show them how it is. You can show them why it matters.
It’s not that they should never quit things (especially things you forced them to do against their will). It’s that if you want them to get across the threshold, they’ll need your help. They’ll need you to encourage them. They’ll need your help developing grit. They’ll need you to convince them that a payoff is coming.
Because it is. Especially if they can learn this as a general life lesson.
The Daily Dad 