Lesson
Parenting five kids is learning how to parent three plus. You learn how to get them safely independent. A key strategy is teaching them how to play. Good play keeps them occupied, but great play keeps them occupied and trying to get better by learning ‘how to fail’.
Teaching vs Learning
Kids do not learn because we know how to teach. They didn’t learn to walk because we did drills with them. You put them in safe situations and let them fall. If they got frustrated you tried to encourage them, unless they were done for the day.
However, they didn’t just give up and walk away when they saw other kids walking. They watched others and tried to imitate. Eventually, they realized they had to figure out how to move their body to mimic the outcome, standing on two feet. That process included dozens or hundreds of attempts along the way. Correcting and adjusting taught them how to improve.
The process learning how to walk is a simple example of how we learn, grow and advance. They saw a model that works because walking got them where they wanted to go much faster. They tried it on their own, probably with some encouragement and support. Then failed until they saw success.
Life Skills
This process of setting a goal, trying with failure until those tries looked a lot like the goal. The same is true your whole life, but the goals are more complex and each failure can take longer than falling to the ground as a toddler. This is the real value in kids playing sports. They learn to fail until they succeed.
I’ve learned the most successful people are confident because they know each failure is closer to success. Moreover, they are not afraid to continuously enhance the goal to make sure they are always improving.
Leave a Reply