We start to really feel like we’re learning again, and more importantly what we’re learning can be seriously impressive! The early wins we had in the first stage give us a foundation, but these new skills are ones we can truly be proud of.

The first few stages of learning are challenging, but they’re the gateway to success. This is where that success starts to emerge and the persistence that was experienced in the Grasp stage will pay off.

In this next instalment of our Stages of Becoming articles, we’re going to learn why this stage is such an important, and rewarding part of the learning process. We call this stage “The Climb” because not only does our engagement and enjoyment begin an upward trend, our skill begins to improve again as well.

For example, a Risky Kid might connect two Moves together to create a combo. But more importantly, the way they control their body, stabilising their hands and foot position has carried across from a different set of Moves, sharing the knowledge. Similarly, the persistence that they learned earlier and the strategies for managing their frustration and self esteem are applied here as well. Moreso, they also know just the right questions to ask their Coaches to progress their skills. It’s all of the skills we’ve learned starting to work together.

It still takes conscious focus for us to achieve this, but the basics are starting to become more automatic. We’re consistently strengthening our skills though and laying more and more foundations. As we’re learning, we start to experience “Aha” moments, where things click into place. This begins to build real self confidence in ourselves.

Not only are we improving our chosen skill, but we’re also working on our resilience, emotional and mental strategies for learning and navigating challenges and building an identity for ourselves.

We’re able to start seeing our knowledge coming together and those “Aha” moments will often be ones we reflect on for our whole lives, those moments we just “get” something.

Not only are our skills and knowledge increasing, but we’re also becoming better at applying problem solving, feedback and making adjustments as we go. We’re starting to create mental processes to respond to challenges intuitively, which is freeing up our thinking to take on more and more complex challenges.

We start to build a threshold of resilience, and associate challenge and adversity in this particular pursuit with our growth, and we’re less likely to be knocked back by failure, to want to disengage or quit.

The Associative Step is no different in that there’s challenges that have to be overcome. The two that emerge are that we’re likely to encounter plateaus at this stage, and also in order to really become experts, we’re going to need to let ourselves be vulnerable and start to care!

Plateaus emerge during this time as skills need more and more effort and attention to push into the next stages. We can often become complacent with our effort when we’re improving, and the need to push through once more like we did in the Grasp stage is something we might forge. When a learner encounters these plateaus, they often mistake them for having reached the limits of their potential.

To push through and reach the highest levels is going to take a high level of dedication, and more importantly, vulnerability. We need to open ourselves up to caring about what we’re doing, and want it to be a part of who we are. However that means that failure is going to hurt that much more, and we’re afraid of coming off the rails. For this reason, some learners will come face to face with this necessity of vulnerability and flinch away.

When your Risky Kid is going through The Climb, the most common behaviours you’re likely to see will be:

• Increases in skill, often which are complex and impressive,
• Improving self esteem and less disengagement in the early part of this stage,
• Possible plateaus followed by disengagement later on in the stage,
• Possible distancing of self without much cause to avoid vulnerability,
• If experiencing a significant setback at this stage, like an injury, likely to take it quite hard,

In the case of your Risky Kids learning going well at this stage, make sure to celebrate it with them! If they do disengage, make sure to validate how they feel, but not their desire to quit.

At this stage families should encourage their kids to start to involve themselves more with their chosen pursuit, working as part of a leadership team, participating in extra classes or other community activities in order to encourage and support vulnerability. If progress slows again, families should reflect on earlier experiences and encourage doubling down with effort and asking for help.

Statements like “It’s ok if you’re bored, you don’t have to go” should be replaced with “I’d like to hear more about where you think that feeling is coming from”. For more advice on navigating disengagement, check out our articles on The Art Of Quitting! Most importantly, work with your Risky Kids team if you see early signs of disengagement.

However we’ll still need to remain mindful of challenging ourselves, and avoiding complacency based issues like skill decay. However when we’re at this stage of our learning, new information flows through us and gets easily understood and we often start pushing the limits of our fields!