At the beginning of each school year, parents often ask, “How can I help may child be successful in school this year?” I would like to recommend an often overlooked but crucial component of success -- making mistakes. Because we live in an age where we are afraid to let children fail and want them to be perfect (e.g., perfect attendance, perfect ACT score, perfect homework paper even if it means answering questions for the child), allowing them to make mistakes is sometimes a struggle.
I recall a mistake my daughter made many years ago when she was 15. She arrived home from school only to realize that she had left a book that she needed in her locker. Her older sister’s car was in the driveway, and the keys were on the piano. Without my permission, she decided to drive the car to school (even though she had never driven). On her way to school that was only two blocks from home, she hit a car and was transported by ambulance to the hospital. As I thought about how thankful I was that she survived and the people in both cars were going to be fine, people began asking how I was going to punish her because she needed to learn a lesson. In the next few days, I decided that it was far more important that this mistake not be wasted and that the lesson to be learned was not determined by my punishment. To help her learn from the mistake, I required her to write a letter to me sharing what she had learned from this mistake and then what she thought should be the consequence of her actions. She wrote a seven- page letter sharing all the lessons she had learned and recommended that she wait one more year before she was allowed to get her driver’s permit. The process of growing and learning from this horrible mistake was life-changing. Now, she is a successful attorney.
Despite a person’s mistake, success can be achieved if it is viewed as a natural part of learning. Many successful men and women have shared experiences when failures occurred and how the lessons learned helped to propel them to even greater feats. Even Thomas Edison had many misses before he invented the light bulb. It is not uncommon for parents to shield their children from making mistakes or to rescue them if one has been made. In doing so, children lose many opportunities to learn.
Why are mistakes an important part of maturation?
How can children learn to feel it is okay to make mistakes?
When a child experiences failures or mistakes, the child is not a failure. John Wooden, former UCLA basketball coach, is reported to have said, “You are not a failure until you start to blame.” With your help, your child can gain insight from a mistake and emerge as one who learns to accept responsibility for his/her actions and then progresses in maturity. So, encourage persistence, rather than perfection and allow your child the freedom to make some mistakes.