Why is failure an important life lesson we teach our kids? It may surprise you to see that we feel we must teach our kids failure is good – but we do believe that. We wrote this post to show you why and we hope you can see this too.
Prepare them to fail
Is it really such a bad thing to get things wrong?
I don’t know about you, but I get stuff wrong all the time. Usually because I am appalling at remembering things.
Even more so since I have had kids; its become second nature. And I regularly employ Chatterbox and Stuntboy as my back-up memory.
An article in The Express discusses how a particular school is showing kids it’s OK not to get everything right all the time; how to discuss it and how to learn from our errors.
How can we learn if not from our mistakes?
Its important from an early age to show children that making mistakes, or failing, is part of life. Saying to our kids, “Oops, mummy made a mistake, nevermind, I’ll try again and next time I’ll be better,” shows them by example that it’s OK not to be great everytime.
And most important is that mistakes and failures mold the success that we achieve throughout our lives. How we deal with our failures can help us succeed next time. If we don’t manage to read that book on our own the first time, let’s try again and learn from where we struggled the last time.
We all need to wobble a bit…
I am reminded of my daughter learning to ride her bike. If we gave up at every mistake we made. We would all still have stabilisers at 35. Though occasionally I think I could do with them…
Chatterbox never gave up.
She just kept on going. Rather wobbly admittedly, but those first falls helped pave the way for her straight, steady ride ahead.
We all need to wobble first before we can achieve stability
Anything in life that’s worth doing is like those first tentative tries on the bike. It’ll take a couple of goes to be confident and steady. Which is why it’s extremely important that we teach our kids failure.
And I mean everything from the small (er) to the big (gish); learning to do your phonics, counting backwards from 10, becoming a mum, running a home, starting a business, getting a new job, learning to drive a car. It’s all a series of little failures that hopefully lead to those big successes.
And my god, it’s all worth it.
We hope this post has helped. f you want some more parenting articles, then why not check these out?
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Helen
Helen
Helen is a mum to two, social media consultant, and website editor; and this site is (we think) the only Social Enterprise parenting magazine! Since giving up being a business analyst when juggling travel, work and kids proved too complicated, she founded KiddyCharts so she could be with her kids, and use those grey cells at the same time. KiddyCharts has reach of over 1.1million across social and the site. The blog works with big family brands (including travel) to help promote their services, as well as offering free resources to parents of kids under 10. It gives 51%+ profits to Reverence for Life, who fund a number of important initiatives in Africa, including bringing running water and basic equipment to a school in Tanzania. Helen has worked as a digital marketing consultant (IDM qualified) with various organisations, including Channel Mum, Truprint, Talk to Mums, and Micro Scooters. She loves to be creative in the brand campaigns she works on. Get in touch TODAY!
thebeesleybuzz
Sunday 2nd of December 2012
such an important lesson - you are so right. x
suzanne
Friday 30th of November 2012
Hear, hear! I am reminded of times when my kids have got all frustrated and annoyed when something doesn't work first time...so worth persevering...and that goes for all of us, adults too! Thanks for linking up :)