Teaching Your Child To Learn From Mistakes: Your Child Will Make Mistakes, It’s How You React That Makes All The Difference!

Everyone makes mistakes, children included. It’s how you react to those mistakes, as a parent, that can make or break your child. For some parents it comes naturally to react quickly by either criticizing, shouting, punishing, threatening, arguing, smacking, belittling a child for their mistake. For other parents, brushing the mistake, comforting the child, is the norm. However, what parents don’t often realize is that their reactions to their child’s mistakes or failures can have lasting effects on how their child handles his/her mistakes and failures for the rest of his/her life.

Steps To Help Your Child Learn From Mistakes:

1. Accept Mistakes As A Normal Part Of Life- As a parent, it’s important to understand no one is perfect, including children. It is also important to let their child know that apart from God, nothing is perfect and humans err.
2. Learning From The Mistake Is What Matters- As parents, learn to think before reacting to your child’s mistake, as the goal is to help your child learn and grow from their mistakes.
3. Discuss The Error & Let Them Take Time To Process Where They Went Wrong-Always, explain the problem to your child calmly without reacting and sticking to the point. Listen to your child and give time for them to process and understand the issue. If your child is upset, wait till they are out of their emotional state.
4. Help Your Child Practice 3 As; Accept, Acknowledge & Apologize- Let them admit that they made a mistake, say sorry, and know that it’s okay they will do better next time. They can do this in person or even in writing (it should be age-appropriate).
5. Resist The Temptation To Get Negative, Instead Appreciate Their Honesty- Whether it’s punishing, yelling, blaming, criticizing, labelling, scolding or even spanking. These are all negative responses that should be avoided at all times. If your child has admitted, apologised and is willing to rectify the mistakes, appreciate and praise them for their positive attitude.
6. Let Your Child Learn On Their Own, Only Help Them Explore The Solutions- As a parent, it’s so tempting to get into the protective mode and prevent a child from making the wrong decisions and facing the dire consequences of those mistakes or failures. Don’t! You can and should only help and guide them in a way that they realize the consequences of their OWN actions, both right and wrong. Let them decide! For solutions, help them explore ways on how to make amends (make it age-appropriate). For example, your child hits another child, you can help them draw a sorry card.
7. Ask Them What They Have Learnt From Their Mistake & Make Them Practice Good Behaviour- It’s important to ask your child what they understand was wrong, so they don’t repeat a similar mistake. For example, if your child hit another child, he/she could say they learnt that it made the person sad and didn’t feel nice. As a parent, you can recreate the incident, so your child automatically practices the good behaviour & do what is right!
8. Practice Forgiveness & Let Your Child Know He/She Is Loved- It’s important to forgive your child and teach your child to forgive themselves in order for them to move on. Once forgiven, the mistake should not be reminded over and over again. Let them know you love them no matter what. Praise them for being brave enough to owe up to their mistakes and be willing to learn from them.