Nobody likes to make mistakes. They’re annoying, frustrating, and sometimes even embarrassing.\u00a0 And they often make us feel like we’ve done something wrong.\u00a0 Unless we change the way we think about them.\u00a0 And when we do, we can discover that mistakes are one of the most powerful teaching tools we have.<\/p>\n
Consider your child being in charge of making a class poster for the school play.\u00a0 He brings home the poster board and stencils and begins to work.\u00a0 \u201cDo you want some help?\u201d you ask.\u00a0 \u201cNo,\u201d he says and without another thought picks up the first letter and stencils it with colored marker on the board.\u00a0 Then he does the next letter, then the next.\u00a0 Pretty soon he realizes that he’s going to run out of room on the board because he didn’t first plan out the lettering.\u00a0 Frustrated and annoyed, he throws the pens on the table.<\/p>\n
You, on the other hand, feel a lesson coming on.\u00a0 You know that this is a great opportunity to teach him some life lessons in a \u201ccontrolled\u201d environment.\u00a0 In a way that doesn’t make him feel belittled and \u201cstupid\u201d you help him come up with ways to solve the poster problem.\u00a0 You remind him that making mistakes is not a bad thing as long as you’re willing to learn from the mistakes.<\/p>\n
Had you insisted he take your help from the beginning, he may have felt like he wasn’t capable of figuring things out on his own.\u00a0 And you would have robbed him of the opportunity to learn how to deal with problems in a constructive way.\u00a0 By not forcing your help on him, you showed him that you respected his decision to make the right choice.\u00a0 Mistake or no mistake, this builds trust.\u00a0 And trust builds confidence…something our kids will need to manage effectively as adults.<\/p>\n