School or Recess: Can Your Family Find the Fun in Failure?
School or Recess: Can Your Family Find the Fun in Failure?
Do you remember when the kids were learning to walk? They got those goose eggs on their heads and bruises all up and down their legs. But our job was to tell them “I know it hurt. You’re okay buddy. Try again.” Within moments they were up and at it again, because they were having so much fun moving around. Why do we lose that sense that you have to mess up a lot of times to learn a skill?
Is failure fun?
Think of it as school or recess.
What I mean by school is being required to sit still, pay attention, follow all the directions and know the answers. If you did not follow the directions the right way or know the exact answers, you got points taken off. Never added. They did not add up the points for all the things you did know, but took away points from a perfect standard. In school we learned that we were less than 100%.
Recess (especially back when we had an hour) was a significant developmental learning period. But we were completely unaware of that. As long as we didn’t cross certain serious lines, we could do what we wanted. It was during recess that we challenged ourselves to swing higher and jump off. We got scrapes, blisters, bruises and skinned knees and we loved it. At recess we invented elaborate games of chase and tweaked the rules we made up. One of us always got mad and we worked it out. We created trading stores and made dandelion chains. So many failed dandelion chains. And we kept at it.
At recess we learned that challenges were fun, that we could run faster, climb higher, jump harder. We learned that failures were necessary parts of play, but we didn’t focus on the failures, we focused on the play. Oh the sand alligators we made.
Recess was not without rules. There were teachers in charge, watching from a distance. But most of the rules were collaborative and negotiated. The games we made up we made together. We were all fully engaged when we played. The value of our work was judged by the fun we had and the new ideas for fun we proposed.
School was led by one individual and the value of our work was judged by how well it complied to that leaders expectations.
(Please understand that this is just an illustration about how we think. I love teachers and I am not ignoring the many ways teachers create more recess like scenarios for learning.)
Does it still sound crazy when I say that failure is fun? Maybe I should say that fun requires failure. At recess if you fail to tag that kid, it’s part of the game. A game of tag is no fun at all if there is no chance of getting caught, or getting away.
How does it look to be a family at recess?
Here’s a story: Two happy boys popped in front of me and announced that I was invited to a party at 11am sharp. “It will be in my room and my name is Ben now,” said one of them. “Yeah, and I’m Rick. Be on time Mommy!” I was delighted; this was new and interesting.
When I presented myself for the party I found that my husband had also been invited. “Ben” announced that we would begin the parties with games before moving onto the next activity. “We will vote on what games we should play.” After we were all took turns proposing a game, an intense staring contest ensued. My husband and I both lost our matches with our sons. Our sons then stared intensely at each other. “Rick,” our younger son was the victor. Of course, an argument about the rules began. They started a rematch, and kept interrupting it to argue over the rules. Eventually they got through that game.
“Now it is time in the party for conversation,” said “Ben.” My husband I and glanced at each other as we suppressed grins at his cuteness. “Rick talk with Daddy and I’ll have a conversation with Mommy.” While Ben and I made observations on each others glasses and how much we liked them, we overheard Rick babbling, “Blah Blah Blah.”
“No, no. A conversation is how you get to know each other,” Ben explained.
“I’ll do what I want,” said Rick. “You’re not in charge.”
“But I’m the party-maker and I decide what we do,” said Ben.
“Parties should be fun,” Rick retorted.
“Okay, what should we do now?” Asked Ben. Rick suggested a thumb war. He won here too, but fortunately the rules had been nailed down ahead of time.
For the final activity of the party, I was required to give a puppet show. The boys piled every stuffed animal they owned on top of me. They gave me numerous suggestions about what should be included in the story, and I threw in some of my own ideas. The boys freely pointed out which ideas were good and which were not. In the end we had a massive interstellar battle between Star Wars characters while inexplicably Kermit the Frog kept wildly waving his long green arms and singing “It’s time to get things started, it’s time to light the lights.”
I observed that every time someone got too worried about the rules and doing things a certain way, the fun and collaboration was immediately sucked from the room. Every time we came back to agreeing on rules with flexibility as a group, connection and creativity showed up and funtime was back.
I am not claiming that our families can always be fun. That’s ridiculous. Sometimes my kids have to deal with a Dad and Mom who are all business. But the more our family style resembles recess: rules with flexibility that we all contribute to, the better. It’s been pretty cool lately: ever since we really started using the 4S’s, our family dinners have started to feel like recess. The kids start conversations and give us ideas about manners. It’s so much nicer, because dinners definitely used to feel like school.
I also want to point out that my kids are elementary school aged and that we can allow a lot more of this now than we could when they were toddlers. But even then, when I look back, the less I worried about parenting “right” and the more I connected with my kids, the better things went even then.
Making the Shift
So how do you shift your family from school to recess? It has to do with your approach to failure. It requires a shift from a culture of perfectionism to a culture of growth and curiosity. Once again, you can use the 4S’s to begin to do this.
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.
Do you recognize how this starts to change things? While you are still in charge, practicing the 4S’s opens space for everybody to be how they are at that moment. Start with a mindset change from school to recess. Imagine you are flying high on that playground swing, getting ready to jump off. Instead of tensing up to avoid a mistake (which almost always leads to a bad landing), embrace the process and fly off that swing. Because being open to landing funny leads to a much higher chance of sticking that landing.
Not sure about this? Try it out. Mess up. Try again. You might just finish that dandelion chain.
This was the second in three posts about failure. Last week was Failing to Succeed: Parenting Mistakes are How We Learn, and next week will look at 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.
Disclaimer: This article represents general education and does not constitute medical advice. My ideas are mine alone.