If you wait until the child articulates that request with a flawless, complete sentence, you will have a dehydrated, dead child. Young children are cute and it is easy to empower them through encouragement. But when infants become children and children become adolescents, we treat learning differently. Whatever the age, having an orientation for participation should hold a higher priority than perfection. Participation is the way to success.
Perfection is too often a burden.
The tendency adults have to correct should be modified by a consideration of where the child is in his stage of learning. For example, when the child is desperately struggling to express an idea or use his brain to solve a problem and is put down by constant correction, he may simply not want to volunteer again. Unfortunately, a focus on perfection has opened pathways for many students to live with the perception that only perfection is acceptable. And some children grow up with the idea that they have to be perfect for people to love them. One way to look at the orientation of a classroom is to watch for both the teacher s and students reactions to mistakes.