Process More Important than Product

Published September 8, 1983. Many years ago, I taught a nursery school class in which the children had an art experience each day. Some days they would fingerpaint, some days they would make collages, and some days they would model with clay. Each day after the experience I would gather up the children’s projects and store them in the basement.  I never sent a project home with a child.

In our school we wanted our children to express themselves with color, shape, paint and clay. We didn’t want them to have to worry about “explaining” their efforts to some adults. The value of the experience was over by the time the product was finished. The process of developing a skill was the important thing.

At the beginning of the year many of the parents would ask if their child had made something that day and asked to have it. I would assure them, indeed, their child had a wonderful experience, and I was going to keep the projects until the end of the year. Some parents became very angry. They apparently didn’t care what kind of experience their children had and wanted to have their children’s work. I felt sorry for those parents because they seemed to be product oriented. They had learned to value the project more than the experience or process.

Since that time I have come to believe that a general principle of child development is as follows:

“The process is more important than the product.”

When parents are product oriented they often become obsessed with comparing children. They compare the products of one child with the products of another child. They compare children on grades, musical skills, athletic abilities. Children with the “best” products somehow become the “best” children.

Wouldn’t it be better to concern ourselves with how a child is progressing and then observe the skills he is learning? When a child develops adequate skills he will usually become successful. When we value the process we can learn to measure children against their own performance and not against each other.

The Bible teaches us this lesson in the Parable of the Talents. You remember a master called three of his servants together and gave five talents to the first, two talents to the second, and one talent to the third. Then he departed to a far country. While he was gone the first servant doubled his five talents to ten. The second servant doubled his two talents to four, but the third servant buried his talent in the ground so he would not lose it.

When the master returned each servant gave an accounting of his talent. The first servant returned his 10 talents to the master, the second servant returned four talents and the third returned his one talent. Apparently the master was not interested in the number of talents returned. He gave identical rewards to the first two servants, not because their products were the same, but because they had learned the same skill or process of how to double their talents (Matt 25:15-30).

If we could learn this lesson as parents then we would not compare one child with another. Rather, we would be able to appreciate each child as a unique and valuable person. And we would be ale to pay attention to the skills our child is developing and not the products they produce.