Will he be OK?
Kids make mistakes – a lot of them. Parents make a lot of mistakes too.
The goal of parenting is to embrace and celebrate errors, mistakes, injuries, and failures; turning them into resilience, achievement, optimism, and success. If your child falls while learning to walk: exude confidence, cheer!, pick them up, dust them off, and set them back on their feet again.
If they are hurt, take a moment to empathize and reassure. If they are injured, apply compassionate care and seek medical attention as needed. No matter what the mistake is, always "set them back on their feet". Continue to do this for the rest of your life.
There are, however, some critical errors that do need to be prevented. For example, it's not beneficial to children to experience traumatic brain injuries, get hit by a car, or experience death; drowning is not life enhancing. While we each will weigh out the risks and benefits based on personal perspective, I'm certain we can all agree that some things need to be prevented to the best of our ability.
Risk-Benefit Analysis
What to worry about, what not to worry about? How do you decide? There is a straight-forward risk-benefit analysis that can be applied to parental decisions and children's activities. We each must weigh out these choices on our own, but it's sensible to have accurate information about risk and benefit to start with.
If the risk is high and the benefit low, skip the activity. If the risk is low and the benefit is high, go for it.
Legality, ethics, morals, all fall into the risk category. If an activity is illegal, unethical, or immoral this pushes the risk assessment up.
Mitigating Risk
We all want our children to reap the maximum benefit of being engaged in a range of healthy activities as they grow up, while minimizing the potential risks.
Examples:
- Bike riding is beneficial, but there is some risk involved. Wearing a helmet maintains all the benefit while reducing the risk.
- Snowboarding and skiing are both beneficial outdoor activities, but they do come with some risks. We can mitigate the risk by having our children wear helmets, take lessons to increase competency, and by keeping them off terrain they are not skilled enough to tackle.
- Soccer is a team sport with risks and benefits. We can support participation in soccer safely and advise against heading the ball.
Keep in mind that your child's brain governs everything in her life -- all current and future potential, opportunity, and success.
There is no benefit happening on the soccer field or other sports activities that is worth risking your child's brain health.
Basic Facts
- It is impossible for a child to live without making and experiencing errors, mistakes, injuries, and failures.
- It is impossible for a child to grow in the absence of errors, mistakes, injuries, and failures.
- Errors, mistakes, injuries, and failures are critical and necessary to healthy development.
- It is impossible to be a parent without making and experiencing errors, mistakes, injuries, and failures.
Harsh, restrictive parenting is a high risk-low benefit activity.
Proactive Parenting
The risk of critical errors can be reduced by providing proactive, anticipatory guidance early and often. Proactive, anticipatory guidance is knowing about the challenges ahead and preparing children to have good knowledge and the necessary skills ahead of time, before they will encounter any given challenge. Knowledge and skills take time to develop. Proactive parenting initiates the teaching and skill development process well in advance of when the need will arrive.
Teaching begins at birth, in developmentally appropriate ways. Many parents are not comfortable or knowledgeable in discussing some things with children and often end up trying to increase control over adolescent behavior far too late, often after the fact.
I watched a toddler tumble down a full flight of stairs recently. The dad had declined the advice of the elders in the room to move the toddler away from the stairs. Down he went. Dad hurried down to retrieve his crying son. I think we all held our breath for a bit, waiting hopefully to see that he was alright. The big bruise on the boy's head was readily apparent as they returned to the top of the stairs. His first head injury? An event for the baby book?
Important note: Don't make up a risk assessment based on some sort of intuitive sense of how dangerous something is. People chronically misjudge real risk. Do the research. The Dad above who allowed his teetering toddler to wobble precariously near the top of the un-gated stairs was exercising poor judgement. All the elders knew this and tried to offer guidance. The likelihood that a toddler will tip and the injury risk of falling down the stairs is real (Child Injured on Stairs Every 6 Minutes), but there is very little if any benefit to allowing the precarious teetering. The child learns nothing of value in this scenario. I can only hope the father did. The risk of injury falling down the stairs is high, the benefit is very low or non-existent.
Trust & Faith (Although important, I moved this to a separate post. Click link to see discussion on trust and faith elsewhere.)
Given the absolute inevitability of errors, mistakes, and failures … the only reasonable parenting option is to embrace and celebrate them as learning and growth producing opportunities.
- Life is a practice-to-mastery activity. Only through practice do we get better.
- Punishment may suppress unwanted behaviors, at best, and only temporarily. It never teaches what to do.
- Studying and celebrating mistakes compels learning and success. What went wrong? What might work better?
- Parents grow as parents by learning from their mistakes. What went wrong? What will work better next time?
- Children can grow by learning from their mistakes. What went wrong? What might work better?
- Learning from mistakes requires self-reflective analysis: what happened, what went wrong? What might work better next time?
When children fail, they should fall into the safe, loving arms of parents who will dust them off, help them get back up again, provide some guidance, and send them back out into the world ready to go again, and again, and again.
Try it out and see how it works. If it doesn't work well, analyze the outcome. What went wrong? What might work better next time? Do I need to practice this more or try something new?
Celebrate both successes and failures, trials and tribulations, wins and losses. Celebrate life.
Printable Version (includes Trust & Faith)
Additional Resources:
Failing Forward: Turning Mistakes Into Stepping Stones for Success, by John C. Maxwell
* Head injuries. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11347686
Kenneth H. Little, MA / 135 Lee Brook Road / Thornton, NH 03285 / 603-726-1006 / Achieve-ES.com
