Life
Letting my kids make big mistakes is not something I'm particularly great at. I'm prone to give them a safety net and be the mom who can help pick up the pieces swiftly. But the older they get, the more I see the benefits of letting kids make mistakes.
When they were little, seeing them try to climb up the tallest ladder on the playground only to have them fall flat on their back when they realized they weren't quite big enough or strong enough to do it yet just broke my heart. However, I now see the benefit of letting them learn lessons the hard way — by making their own mistakes. When my second grader forgets to take a homework assignment the day it's due, I don't run it up to the school for him. He can take it the next day and lose a few points. Chances are he will only do it a time or two before he learns that his hard work would be rewarded with a better grade if he remembered to bring his homework back on time.
"The only failure in life is not to learn from mistakes. Parents who love their children unconditionally mean they love them while they make mistakes, too. The goal is to help your son or daughter course-correct if they make a mistake and learn to get back up again," Maureen Healy, child psychologist, author of The Emotionally Healthy Child, and parenting coach at Growinghappykids.com tells Romper. "We know as adults that mistakes happen, but it's getting back up that makes all the difference in the world."
As it turns out, the benefits of letting kids make mistakes can help them develop skills that are necessary in order to become successful adults. By supporting your kids when they make a misstep, you can reinforce these benefits and watch them learn valuable lessons from their mistakes.
5
Making Mistakes Increases Resiliency
"By letting children make mistakes, they are able to learn to tolerate stress and develop their own coping tools for overcoming difficult situations," Zlotnik tells Romper. "Furthermore, they learn that everything does not have to be perfect. This helps children build resiliency — the ability to overcome challenging and negative experiences.”
Zlotnik also suggests that parents can model how to be resilient by allowing children to see them fail or make mistakes and acknowledging them.
6
Making Mistakes Lets Kids Learn To Handle Stress & Disappointment
“If parents allow children to make mistakes, children will face the natural consequences of the situation, whether it is a skinned knee, a bad grade, or feeling disappointed. By having to deal with these consequences, over time, children will learn more adaptive ways of handling the situation and will also learn that they are able to handle stress and disappointment," Zlotnik tells Romper.
So, even when your child gets upset by a natural consequence, the stress they feel in the moment is something they're learning from. "As such, over time they become more responsible by making better choices, avoiding negative consequences, and learning more adaptive ways to handle situations," Zlotnik adds.
7
Bonus Benefit: Allows Parents To Practice Their Own Coping Skills
It may seem counterintuitive to allow your child to fall on their face, so to speak. After all, you don't want them to get hurt or feel bad about themselves. But there are clear benefits of letting your child make a mistake, including the benefit of allowing you as a parent to practice your own coping skills.
"In order for a parent to overcome hesitancy in letting a child make a mistake and possibly fail, it is important for the parent to develop a plan about how they would handle their own stress while watching their child make a possible mistake," Zlotnik explains. "For example, the parent could use his or her own coping skills such as relaxation or distraction to overcome the uncomfortable time. Also, they can use self-talk and tell themselves, by allowing my child to make a mistake, I am helping my child become more resilient and independent. Overall, parents must learn to balance when to step in and when to let their child learn from experience."
Experts:
Maureen Healy, child psychologist, author of The Emotionally Healthy Child, and parenting coach at Growinghappykids.com
Scott Krugman, MD, MS, FAAP, Vice Chair, Department of Pediatrics, Herman & Walter Samuelson Children’s Hospital at Sinai Hospital of Baltimore
Deborah Zlotnik, Ph.D., psychologist with Children's National
This article was originally published on