As the mom of a 10-year-old daughter and seven-year-old son, one of the hardest lessons for me to teach my kids is about consequences.
It’s not that the concept is particularly complex, in fact, it is incredibly simple and straight forward. Your actions result in a reaction—it’s Newton’s Third Law.
The difficult part is holding yourself back from interfering when you know your child’s decision is going to result in a negative consequence.
As parents, protecting our children is deeply entrenched in us, but there comes a time when you must let them “figure it out on their own.” The best teacher is experience and there are certain lessons they can only learn through doing.
For example, they are much more likely to grab their jacket on the way out the door the next time after they have spent an hour shivering outside because they refused to bring/wear it the last time. You can tell them it is cold out and they need a coat until you are blue in the face; they need to experience the biting chill for themselves so they will reach for the sweater the next time.
But was leaving the coat at home the “wrong” decision? The concept that there are no wrong decisions, only different life experiences, is an interesting one.
We spend all their young years trying to teach our children how to make the “correct” decision. How to do what’s “right.” It is a cruel irony that the most effective way to do this is by first experiencing what’s wrong. This is how we all learn, how we grow.
Good parents want to protect their children from everything but doing so would be a huge disservice to them. Sometimes our kids need to be uncomfortable, wrong, hurt, cold and mad because these are all parts of the life we are trying to prepare them for.
Whether they are trying (and failing) to make friends, starting out as a young entrepreneur (with a less than fool-proof product) or headed off to sleep-away camp (maybe before they are ready), we must let them fail.
Being a great parent, isn’t about making sure they don’t fall, it’s about being there to help them up when they do.
– Stacie Gaetz
