Failing to Succeed: Parenting Mistakes are How We Learn.

Failing to Succeed: Parenting Mistakes are How we Learn.

How do you feel about failure?

Is a mistake a threat or an opportunity? Is it evidence of poor learning or the pre-requisite to learning? Is Yoda right?

Here’s the thing about failure: we can’t avoid it, particularly as parents. We will fail sometimes. We will make mistakes, usually every day.

We can see failure as a big problem. Or we can see it as the positive it is. If you failed it means you tried. If you failed it means you had the courage to try. Parents who can try, fail and keep trying provide a crucial example for their kids.

Failure gives us the chance to open up and look at our situation. It gives us a chance to listen to ourselves and our kids. What works? What doesn’t? How do you feel about it?

We fear failure because often we shut down when we face it. Maybe we had early examples of adults fearing it. Maybe judging words were said to us if we made mistakes. We really don’t know how to approach the subject with our kids. So we tend to tell them they are great, and give them trophies for participation.

Our Kids Will Imitate Us

The good news is that we don’t have to worry too much about what we actually teach our kids about failure. We just have to show them how to deal with failure. The most powerful form of learning is called modeling. It means that kids model themselves on what we do and what our emotions tell them. So working on our own response to failure is actually more important than working on how we respond to their failures. If you can treat yourself with gentleness when you make a mistake and see it for the part of the learning process it is, you will automatically start to treat your kids the same way. And your kids will imitate you.

When it comes to mistakes we often react with either criticism, defensiveness or avoidance. When we react with criticism of self or others, we are saying “You failed and you should have known better.” When we react with defensiveness, we are saying “It wasn’t my mistake, it happened because of someone else or some circumstance.” Avoidance says, “That failure didn’t really matter. Let’s ignore it and focus on how you’ll do better next time.” These reactions come from fear of rejection and judgment.

The opposite of these are gentleness and curiosity. Gentleness says, “Your self worth is not in question, even though this happened." Curiosity is where it gets interesting. Instead of fussing about the mistake, what if we get curious? How did that happen? Why did I do that? (Hint: it’s usually big feelings or misunderstandings.)

Facing Mistakes Improves Performance.

The book Nurture Shock discusses a study done looking at the fact that “Brushing aside failure, and just focusing on the positive, isn’t the norm all over the world.” They describe a study done by Dr. Florrie Ng comparing fifth-graders in Illinois and in Hong Kong. The children were given two tests with a five minute break in between. Their mothers were told that they did poorly on the test (whether that was true or not) and sent in to talk with them during the break. “The American mothers carefully avoided making negative comments. They remained fairly upbeat and positive with their child. The majority of the minutes were spent talking about something other than the testing at hand, such as what they might have for dinner. But the Chinese children were likely to hear, ‘You didn’t concentrate when doing it,’ and ‘Let’s look over your test.’ The majority of the break was spent discussing the test and its importance. After the break, the Chinese kids’ score on the second test jumped 33 percent, more than twice the gain of the Americans… While their words were firm, the Chinese mothers actually smiled and hugged their children every bit as much as the American mothers.”

“Nurture Shock” also describes how “Michigan scholar Jennifer Crocker studies this exact scenario and explains that the child may come to believe failure is something so terrible, the family can’t acknowledge its existence. A child deprived of the opportunity to discuss mistakes can’t learn from them.”

So if we communicate that it is safe to talk about mistakes and learn from them, kids do much better. In fact, feeling safe to learn from mistakes is an essential life skill. Dr. Adam Russo talked about this at TEDxNaperville last year in his talk “We Must Teach Our Kids to Fail.”

Using the 4S’s When We Fail

Let’s come back to us as parents and the pressure on us to be great parents all the time. Have you felt the belief in our culture that if we don’t get it right our kids will be messed up? Are you starting to understand that this very effort to get it right may cause the same damage to our kids that we were trying to avoid?

And why in the world do we think something as important and complicated as raising our kids will be something we will just know how to do? Don’t we have to make mistakes along the way to get good at it?

Not being afraid to fail and modeling learning from it leads to creativity, problem solving, and emotional resilience. Does this task feel too big? Here’s the good news, the 4S’s of leadership help here too. You can apply them to yourself just as much as to your kids.

Did you fail? STOP before you get into the usual negative or defensive self-talk. SIGH, check in with yourself and your feelings. SEE: really observe yourself and those feelings, maybe the events that triggered them. Then do SOMETHING, even if it’s another mistake to learn from. One great something to try is showing yourself compassion, which actually can free you up to make positive change.

Let’s do a test case. You are cooking and you set the bowl too close to the edge of the counter. You bump it and it teeters and falls. Eggs and butter ooze all over the cabinets and you feel frustrated at the size of the mess you have to clean up. You might say “I’m such an idiot! Why did I do that?” This response models self-shaming. It shuts down learning and it makes mistakes more than just mistakes: now they are about whether you are good enough as a person.

Or you could clench your teeth and put on a fake smile and say, “That’s alright.” This response shows your kids that mistakes are scary because they are so bad we have to pretend they don’t matter. Or perhaps you say, “Oh I feel so frustrated. I made a mistake. Next time I will put the bowl farther back.” Well done! This is great because it owns your feelings, makes it okay to feel bad about a mistake, but also shows learning from the mistake.

You may be thinking, “Oh great! Now I have to monitor my behavior all the time.” But that’s not the idea here at all. So what if you just shouted “I’m so stupid! Why did I do that?” Take a 4S moment. Do a quick STOP, SIGH & SEE. Then go authentic. Try SOMETHING like this: “Hey buddy. Did you see that and see how upset I got? You know what, I don’t like making messes and I don’t like making mistakes. I feel pretty frustrated. But I know it’s okay to feel frustrated and I bet I can figure out a way to do put that bowl somewhere else next time. I am going to remind myself that mistakes are how I learn.”

My next two posts will look at how our lives are no fun without failure, and the emotional growth that comes with failure. Don’t want to miss them? Subscribe here. To learn more about engaging your parenting leadership go to www.theprimarycarer.com.

THE 4S’s: When you feel a SHOULD, STOP, SIGH and SEE. Then do SOMETHING.

When you feel a SHOULD coming on, STOP. Just pause. Don’t act instantly.

SIGH. Take a deep breath. A long slow one. Imagine it’s a sigh of relief, as if everything is OK. And if you can, remember that you are enough. You are what your child needs.

SEE. Look at your child. Ask yourself what your child needs right now. Do they need you to do something, or do they need to figure it out for themselves?

Then (and only then) do SOMETHING. Even if that something is nothing.

I don’t care what you do next. It really doesn’t matter. It does not matter if you get it wrong. Because if you STOP, SIGH & SEE before you do SOMETHING, you will build skills quickly. You will get to know your child. ©Alison Escalante MD/The Primary Carer

Disclaimer: This article represents general education and does not constitute medical advice. My ideas are mine alone.