What do you do when your child wants to do stuff that is too hard for them?

[TheCountessofFitzdotterel]

Say, they want to read a book that you know they won't possibly understand?
Do you just let them and help them where you can? What if you don't really understand it either? Or is it actually good because it will teach them resilience (of which my ds in in dire need)?

I'd let them read a book and make of it what they can. Provided the themes aren't completely inappropriate.
I read all sorts of adult books as a child, with hindsight much went over my head, some was tedious (but I wasn't going to give up) but I had a lovely time and it certainly hasn't put me off reading.

Thanks Perspicacia. That's kind of my instinct but in my case it was fiction whereas in his case it's philosophy - so the content is completely safe, just impenetrable.

Yes, let them have a go. DD wanted to read some Shakespeare not long ago (she is 9, was 8 at the time). I didn't think she'd enjoy it much but I let her have a go and she made it through a whole play (Midsummer Night's Dream, so nothing scary). She had to ask me a few things but mostly she did pretty well on her own.

Assuming the content is age appropriate, then yes every time. If it's something she wouldn't have a hope with, I used to just warn her why I thought it might not be ideal, and tell her if she wanted help or ideas on something similar then that was fine.

I'd let them do it unless it was inappropriate content or inconvenient.

e.g. if they wanted me to buy a book for £20 that i knew they would probably give up on after a short while. I won't pander to a pair of little princes!

Obviously a lot depends whether the theme of the book is inappriopiate. Not allowing a child to read a book on the holocaust at six years old is different from telling them that Shakespeare is too hard.

Telling a child that something is too hard for them is putting a ceiling on their achievement. A common example of this is a teacher who refuses to teach a concept to a low ablity set because he/she thinks that those children will be too thick to understand. The child in the bottom set then fails the exam because he has not covered the relevant material in his lessons and then is deemed thick because he failed the exam.

Children of all ablity levels need to know that failure is OK. Infact they need to learn to embrace failure and develop a healthy attitude towards mistakes or set backs. If a child does not occassionally experience failure then they it will come as a shock to them when failure does happen for the first time.