مقالات

Mistakes, errors, poor judgment, and failure are simply inevitable in life. As hard as we try, none of us can be perfect, and we all fall short of the mark on occasion. As parents, many of us rightly set high expectations for our children. Using our own experience, we try to help them avoid the mistakes we made ourselves.

But because we are so focused on helping our children succeed, we sometimes forget that making mistakes is an important aspect of a child’s development. Mistakes, though frustrating for us as parents, are actually a crucial way for children to reflect on what went wrong, as well as develop new skills and new strategies to use in the future. Our role as parents is to help our children understand what went wrong and grow through collecting valuable lessons acquired by mistakes. A few useful strategies to keep in mind include:

Keeping calm

Some mistakes are bigger than others, and at some stage, the majority of children will make mistakes that can cause genuine (and justified) anger in their parents. Shouting and showing extreme displeasure may be your gut reaction, but this will just increase tension and have a negative effect on your relationship in the long term. Outbursts like these could stir thoughts in your child’s mind about being secretive the next time something goes wrong. If your aim is to have an honest relationship with healthy communication, there needs to be some understanding. Put simply, your children need to feel that it is safe to come to you with their issues. Engage in open dialogues frequently to discuss what happened and why. Work together to ensure the issue doesn’t happen again.

Taking responsibility

When mistakes occur, many youngsters’ initial reaction is to shift the blame away from themselves. Why is this? There is a possibility it has something to do with the reaction they received the first time they crossed a line. Regardless, help your children analyze their own actions, understand what they did wrong, and what they can do differently if a similar situation arises in the future. Some mistakes will need to have consequences. The key is in working together, not against each other.

Accepting mistakes as a part of growing

Children are young and inexperienced. They are still developing into responsible members of the family and society. An error of judgment that seems inexplicable to us won’t have been so obvious to them. Work together to understand the reason they made this decision because this will help push them towards making a better decision in the future.

Create a nurturing learning environment

Mistakes should not leave a child panic-stricken, rather a child should leave such situations having learnt something and grown in a way. Had they left situations where they made errors feeling terrified to make another move, they would not gain constructive knowledge. Moreover, children appreciate Discussions about occasions where you made a mistake, and how you dealt with it.

Time spent at school is the formative period in your child’s development. It’s important to not only instill academic knowledge, but the ability to allow children to self-analyze. No one ever learned anything by being too afraid to try new things.  After all, no one is too old to fail and to learn. It is through these experiences that children and adults grow socially and morally. At ASCS-Maliha, we focus on providing children with a well-rounded education that involves engaging them in experimentation, exploration, and opportunities to learn from trial and error.  To learn more, please contact us at [insert email/contact details].