The Home...A Safe Place to Fail!

Our wonderful middle school principal used to do these great presentations for parents at the beginning of the school year.  He would bring some element of child development and a large dose of humor into these discussions and I would sit on the edge of my seat like an eager student because he always had so many pearls of wisdom to pass along.

He always said his goal was to make our middle school a safe place to fail.  It makes so much sense: the grades don’t matter for college and the stakes associated with failure are as low as they will ever be.

Over time, we have adopted this mantra for our home.  If I had to choose between my teen learning from mistakes now under our roof or later in college when there’s no safety net, I would choose now every time.  According to the book, The Self-Driven Child, a child or teen is more likely to get depressed by having overbearing parents that don’t let them make decisions than from experiencing a failure as a result of a decision they made for themselves.

Don’t hear me saying we put down all the guardrails - we would never let them do something that would truly harm themselves or someone else. But allowing them to take responsibility for their own decisions and learn from mistakes builds their character and resilience.  You can do this…let them fail!