The first mistake I remember making occurred in kindergarten. During snack time one morning, I asked the boy across from me what religion he was.
”We don`t ask questions like that,” my teacher gasped, swooping down on me, more agitated than I`d ever seen her. Suddenly my private conversation had become a class lesson: ”What religion we are doesn`t matter,” she declared. Even as I blushed with shame, I felt ambushed. What had I done to provoke such intense reproach?
One of the things this public tongue-lashing taught me was that religion not only mattered a great deal but it was an extremely sensitive subject. I also came to realize that as much as parents and teachers exhorted me to ask questions and not be ashamed of what I didn`t know, they were lying: Asking questions was dangerous and humiliating; mistakes were to be avoided at all costs.
That I reached this conclusion wasn`t only my teacher`s fault, of course. My family already had taught me that if I were a good enough girl I could keep failure at bay by tiptoeing through my life.
As it developed, my life became ruled by caution. To avoid situations in which I might not succeed, I declined invitations to go on ski trips, refused to leave an unsatisfying job to strike out on my own and during friendly games of ”Trivial Pursuit” even swallowed answers I wasn`t absolutely sure were right. Instead of trying and failing occasionally, I was nearly paralyzed with the fear of failure.
Then I had my first child. Of all the qualities I wished to nurture in him, I most wanted him to be brave, unafraid of taking risks. But how could I teach him this skill without having it myself?
As it turned out, he helped me before I could help him. Being a mother brought me face-to-face with hundreds of opportunities to make a mistake. Once I waited too long to take him to the doctor; the next week I went prematurely. One time I intervened in a dispute between my son and a friend when I shouldn`t have; the next afternoon at the sandbox I didn`t act swiftly enough, and my son got hit.
Gradually I came to understand that mistakes can`t be filtered out of life like coffee grounds, that failure doesn`t have to be humiliating, that failure bestows a kind of knowledge you can`t get any other way. And though it seemed vital that I help my son learn from his mistakes before he reached my age, I wasn`t sure where to begin.
Here`s what I`ve discovered from the experts, as well as from my own experience.
– Straighten out your head first. ”To help children learn from their mistakes, parents have to examine their attitudes toward failure and accept their own imperfections,” says Molly Layton, Ph.D., a clinical psychologist in the Philadelphia area. This is often easier said than done, for it goes to the heart of a deep conflict experienced by both parents and children. Youngsters need to think their parents are competent. But, in fact, young kids often take this inclination to the extreme and idealize their parents.
On the other hand, children who think of their parents as ”perfect” can end up feeling intimidated by them.
”Kids need to see that their parents are imperfect,” says Brad Sachs, Ph.D., a clinical psychologist in Columbia, Md. ”Otherwise, they become demoralized.”
– Let your mistakes show. Because children copy our attitudes-and also our behavior-I found it a good policy to admit mistakes when I made them. If the block tower we were building collapsed, I`d tell him that I hadn`t supported it well enough. When he overheard me speaking about a friend who was angry with me, I explained that I`d neglected to invite her to a luncheon. I always explained why I had made a decision, and what I would do differently next time.
He is 8 years old now, and his eyes still widen with wonder, gratitude and a certain delight when I admit my failures. And my confessions free him, occasionally, to admit his own errors, if only to comfort me.
– Take the sting out of mistakes. Another way to help children feel positive about taking risks is to teach them to focus more on effort than achievement.
Kids do this naturally, says Sachs, who notes that when children play, they don`t evaluate each other`s performance but comment on what is happening. The notion of a ”right” way and a ”wrong” way to do something is learned from their parents and from the competitive society around them. And kids begin to assimilate this lesson around the age of 5 or 6.
Parents also should give their children positive reinforcement for their daily small achievements. This is a worthy and natural response. But parents can give their kids too much praise.
”Suppose,” muses Sachs, ”your child brings home a picture of a purple teapot. And you go crazy praising it, and make a big production of hanging it on the refrigerator. Your child starts to think, `Well, if she likes this so much, I better keep drawing it this way. If I draw it differently, maybe she won`t hang it up.”`
But how should parents react to their children`s efforts? According to Sachs, the point is to comment not on the picture of the teapot or the A on the spelling test, but on the act of creation: ”You really like coloring, don`t you?” or ”I bet you feel proud of yourself for doing so well in school.” This genre of comment initiates dialogue and further discussion, whereas a hearty ”What a teapot!” or a disappointed ”You can do better than a B” is all too often a conversation-stopper.
– Make mistakes a part of life. It`s helpful to build mistakes into play itself, says Alan D. Entin, Ph.D., a family therapist in Richmond, Va.
When you`re drawing with your child, for example, make a big show of attempting to depict a fire engine, then crumple it up, throw it away and try again. Encourage children to see that every task can be attacked with a trial- and-error approach, that no one is expected to ”get it right” the first time around. Eventually, the boundary between practice and performance will blur so totally that your child will feel freer to experiment and take creative risks.
– Instill an internal yardstick. Try to get your child to understand that the only helpful form of evaluation is self-evaluation. ”Kids should be encouraged to compare their most recent effort to their previous ones rather than to other people`s,” says Paul Lavin, Ph.D., child psychologist and author of ”Parenting the Overactive Child” (Madison, $21.95 hardcover, $10.95 paperback). ”Constantly comparing ourselves to others and being content only if we are superior to them will lead to dissatisfaction over the long run.”
– Help your child handle competition. Children, however, sometimes resist a non-competitive slant on their activities. After all, even the game
”Candyland” has a winner and a loser. Like any other skill, learning to lose is easiest to grasp when children are exposed to it incrementally. The world can be a devastating place, and children who experience too many failures end up feeling depressed and inadequate.
Translating this principle into everyday life means that parents should structure games so that the focus is not on winning but on enjoying playing, says Judith L. Alpert, Ph.D., professor of applied psychology at New York University.
– Identify each success. Another good tactic is to ”catch children at success,” says Entin. If a child hesitates-”I don`t know how to draw an elephant”-assure her that there is more than one way to do so, and that she should try to draw the elephant any way she can. Watch for the many opportunities that arise naturally to praise your youngster for trying, for taking risks, for embarking on an endeavor-no matter how small-whose outcome is uncertain.
– Foster good judgment. As children move out of the cocoon of the family, they increasingly encounter failure-on the playground, in school-that their parents will be unable to modulate. ”But even from a distance,” says Braulio Montalvo, a psychologist at the Family Institute of New Mexico in Albuquerque, ”parents need to remain watchful of all aspects of their children`s sense of their own competency.”
One of the ways to do this is to help children distinguish between reasonable risks and recklessness. According to Lavin, a foolish risk is one in which the child endangers life or limb with some daring act because her peers might otherwise call her ”chicken.” A sensible risk, says Lavin, is one that can lead to some benefit regardless of the outcome.
– Be a watcher and a listener. Of course, parents and children sometimes have different ideas about what constitutes a mistake. Some children cry and become very upset when they fall down at the playground; others get up, brush themselves off and get on with the game. It`s best to hang back and see how your child reacts before interceding.
This ”bite your tongue period,” as Layton calls it, is hard to endure. But what you may see as empathy could be an attempt to mold your child`s idea of failure to your own. Let him decide which mistakes to get upset about.
Almost any mistake can be tolerated and learned from if children feel they have a ”home base” to retreat to, says Layton. ”When the bumps and knocks of life push kids down,” she says, ”they need to know they can run back home and refuel.”
