In order to foster resilience in our children we need to have the right parenting philosophy. We need to be clear what our goals are for our children and what are job is as parents. Our main objective as parents should be to teach our children enough life skills so that they can manage one day on their own and be productive and contributing members of our society.
One important life skill is learning to manage the mistakes and errors we make, repair them and grow from them. Often parents are fearful of allowing their children to move forward in life and make mistakes. We want to protect them. However, children who are not allowed to make mistakes can become fearful of making the smallest decisions, may be hesitant to solve problems and try new experiences. We want to promote resilience in our children. Resilient children can make mistakes, get up brush themselves off and move on.
There are 4 simple ways we can teach our children the right attitude about mistakes:
1. Encourage inventiveness:
My son rides his bike to his counselor job. He complained that his backpack kept on banging against the wheel of his bike. It was driving him crazy. He took an old backpack and tried to refashion the straps so that his bag wouldn’t hang down so low and reach the wheels of his bike. He was using a scissor. It just seemed to me as I was watching him that he was ruining this backpack. I kept my mouth shut. After a few unsuccessful attempts, he came to the same conclusion. “I think I made it worse.”
Instead of berating him for his attempt, I knew that this was the perfect opportunity to applaud his efforts in trying to find a solution to his problem. I said, “I am glad you tried. You know it took Thomas Edison over 1,000 attempts to make the light bulb. I am also glad that you used an old back pack and not your new one.”
This is the kind of response that promotes resilience in our children. We can teach children that little failures are opportunities for growth and that effort should be celebrated.
2. Get children involved in understanding the values of mistakes:
Use your children’s blunders and missteps as an occasion for teaching them the intrinsic value of mistakes. My other son knocked on and broke the outer glass on our back door (which unbeknownst should have been replaced when we moved into our house because it did not meet safety standards- our bad). I checked to see that he wasn’t hurt which he wasn’t. Instead of yelling at him for being irresponsible, I tried to gently encourage him to think of something he learned from this mishap. I said, “Well, we definitely learnt something from this, maybe that we should never knock on any door that looks like glass? What do you think?”
It can also be helpful to share what you have learned from the situation. Later on I said to my son, “ What I learnt from this whole thing is that if we ever buy a new house the first thing we will do is make sure that any glass looking doors are made from tempered glass or plastic!”
3. Tell stories of failures that were really successes:
Many successful people relate that their mistakes and failures were valuable lessons. Their difficult and oftentimes painful experiences shaped their future in powerful ways. This is the attitude we should adopt even about our little mistakes. Collect stories about failures that were the impetus for great achievements and share them with your children. I asked my son for some stories that he knows about a successes that started out as a mistake. He told me there was something about Alexander Graham Bell but he couldn’t remember it exactly. We looked online and found the following:
“Bell enjoyed the work of the German physicist Hermann Von Helmholtz. and read his book written in German. In his book, Von Helmholtz stated that, vowel sounds could be produced using electrical tuning forks and resonators. Bell could not read German very well so he thought that Von Helmholtz had said that vowel sounds could be transmitted over wire. This misunderstanding changed the world. Alexander Graham Bell said, ‘It gave me confidence. If I had been able to read German, I might never have begun my experiments in electricity.’
Our family loves these kinds of stories and we try to refer to them laughingly when we make mistakes.
4. Be honest about your own mistakes:
Adults can share their mistakes with children and what they have learnt from those errors. I had a social mishap recently where I unintentionally insulted a relative of mine. I was terribly embarrassed and ashamed, even though I had never meant to hurt her. I was out of sorts the whole day until I pulled together enough courage to sheepishly call her to apologize and explain myself. She was very kind and forgiving. I shared this experience with my children. I said, “I am a little preoccupied and upset. I hurt this person’s feelings and I didn’t mean to. I feel really embarrassed. I did do the right thing in the end, I called her and apologized and she was very nice and forgave me right away. I think I will definitely be more careful of what I say to people from now on.”
Children learn best from role modeling. Seeing you struggle with doing the right thing will teach them first hand what to do when they make the same mistakes. They will not shy away from fixing what needs to be fixed and in this case making amends because they have a strong visual model of how it is done.
Making mistakes is not something to be feared. It is a part of everyday life. Teaching our children to deal with their errors will encourage them to be resilient and strong. It creates a “can do” feeling that they will use and value their whole lives.