I hope you had the opportunity to see our production of Beauty and the Beast last week. It was wonderfully entertaining and something our whole school community should be proud of. The performances were outstanding, the orchestra played with enormous passion and energy, and what we saw on stage was the result of a remarkable team effort.

Thank you to our performers, musicians, backstage and front-of-house teams, volunteers, parents, prop makers and everyone else who contributed. Particular thanks to our Director, Mr Follett, and our Band Director and Conductor, Ms Hilton, for bringing it all together.

Of course, what the audience saw was the polished final product. What we didn’t see were the months of rehearsals, forgotten lines, repeated choreography, mistakes, nerves, frustrations and those inevitable moments when things simply didn’t go according to plan. And perhaps that is where some of the most important learning happened. Putting on a musical is a wonderful lesson in something our children increasingly need as they grow up: resilience.

I read an interesting article recently suggesting that, in our desire to protect children from distress, parents can sometimes protect them from the very experiences they need in order to grow. It caught my attention. Protecting our children is one of the most natural instincts we have. When they’re toddlers, we stop them falling down the stairs. When they’re five, we don’t let them cross the road alone. When they’re teenagers, we lie awake wondering why someone who cannot locate the dirty-clothes basket believes they are qualified to operate a motor vehicle.

But eventually we face a much harder question: When should we protect our children from a problem, and when should we allow them to work through it?

There is important nuance here. Genuine anxiety and significant distress are real and sometimes require professional support. But neither should we assume that every uncomfortable feeling is something from which children need to be rescued. Sometimes being nervous is normal. Sometimes disappointment is normal. Sometimes things are simply hard. And sometimes discovering, “I didn’t think I could do this, but I did,” is exactly how confidence grows.

We wouldn’t teach a child to swim by making absolutely certain they never entered the water. Yet sometimes we try to build resilience while removing every situation that might require it. At school, we see this in all sorts of ways: a disappointing assessment result, a disagreement with a friend, missing out on a team, forgotten homework or feeling terrified about giving a speech.

Every situation is different, and sometimes adults absolutely need to intervene. But there is a useful question we can ask: “Is my child in danger, or are they uncomfortable?” Those are very different things. If they’re in danger, being bullied or their wellbeing is genuinely at risk, we act. But if they are experiencing an ordinary disappointment, embarrassment, nervousness or consequence, sometimes the most loving thing we can do is stay beside them while they work their way through it.

That might mean resisting the temptation to solve a problem immediately and instead asking, “What do you think you could do?” It might mean allowing a small consequence to do its job. A forgotten hat, homework book or sports uniform can feel like a national emergency at 7:55 in the morning. Usually it isn’t.

It might also mean allowing our children to be disappointed. They will miss out on teams, receive results they don’t like and discover that someone else was better suited to an opportunity. We can sympathise without immediately trying to reverse the outcome. “I’m sorry. I know you’re disappointed” can sometimes be more helpful than “I’ll fix it.”

And it means helping children distinguish between “I can’t” and “I don’t want to because this is uncomfortable.” One of the hardest parts of being a parent or teacher is knowing when to step in and when to step back.

Our goal isn’t to raise children who never experience difficulty. It is to raise young people who discover that difficulty doesn’t have to defeat them. Young people who can hear “no” and keep going, who can fail and try again, who can experience disappointment and move forward, and who know when to ask for help while also developing the confidence to solve more and more problems themselves.

Perhaps our job isn’t to clear every obstacle from the road ahead. Perhaps it is to walk alongside our children long enough that, eventually, they discover they can climb over some of those obstacles themselves.

Which brings me back to Beauty and the Beast. The applause celebrated what happened on stage, but some of the most valuable learning happened long before the curtain went up, in the practice, perseverance, teamwork and courage required to get there.

There is a wonderful moment for any parent or educator when a young person who once said, “I can’t do this,” looks back and realises, “Actually, I can.”

Mike Curtis, Principal