Natural Learning Curves

Learning is a requirements for life. We learn so much in the courae of our lives. Recently, I brought my third son home from the hospital. He was born prematurely on April 2nd. As I watched him grow, together we learned a lot. One of the things I learned about was the natural leanring curve my son had to go through.

In order for my little guy to come home he had to learn to eat from a bottle. That sounds like such a simply thing until you consider some of the following challenges he faced:

• he had been fed through a tube for more than two months since birth
• he could not speak or understand the spoken word
• he could not read directions or even pictures for that matter
• he had a short attentions span
• he got distracted easily
• he had not seen a demonstration of how to eat from a bottle.

One of the lessons I took away from this observation was again how fundamental learning is to life. As he made progress and regressed I was reminded also of the incremental gains and losses we seen in the various aspects of our work lives. The learning curve is rarely, if ever, a straight line up to perfect performance.