Let your children make mistakes – it’s part of exploring
Next time your child makes a mistake, be more tolerant, because she is learning.
Making mistakes is a way of learning and improving one’s skills. The same theory should be applied to children.
Cindy Glass, owner and founder of an after-school remediation franchise, Step Up Education Centres, looks to broaden our thinking in terms of making mistakes.
“Generations of people have passed on the untruth that making mistakes is to be avoided at all costs and worse, making mistakes, even minor ones, means punishment and humiliation.
For so many children mistakes are a constant source of anxiety and fear. Surely it is time to consider the merits of making effective mistakes! After all it is only through making mistakes that we are able to learn anything new,” said Cindy.
Bill Gates and Richard Branson are examples of modern businessmen who used their devastating mistakes to learn valuable lessons which would eventually catapult them to global success. Another example is Thomas Edison who failed a whopping 1 000 times in his quest to create the light-bulb. He is famous for saying that he would never give up because he had simply learned 1 000 different ways how not to make a light-bulb.
So, if the path to success is paved with mistakes, how do we master that art and instill this learning in our children?
Cindy sheds some light on two ways to promote learning in young ones:
• You need to embrace mistakes. There is only one effective way to teach children to embrace their mistakes and use them as valuable opportunities to learn. Parents and guardians need to own and embrace their mistakes. We need to acknowledge them for what they are and find effective solutions as we learn better ways of doing things. They need to teach children to be comfortable with making mistakes because adults are comfortable in making their mistakes.
• Teach them to own their mistakes. One of the most valuable tools that you can give your child is to teach him to own his mistakes. To achieve this, we need to remove the fear that is associated with making mistakes by finding it within ourselves to be tolerant of the imperfectness of children.
“After all, we are no strangers to making mistakes. Parents’ reactions to mistakes will set the tone for ownership and positive learning. This does not mean that consequences are no longer important, quite the opposite, but – choose your battles. Accidents are accidents and deliberate mistakes are choices. Children who are taught to use their mistakes as learning opportunities are considerably less anxious and significantly more confident in their exploration of the world they live in, and this is beautiful,” Cindy concluded.
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