I scored As in all my art and craft projects, but none of those marks brought any happiness. You must be wondering why this little girl is not happy even after scoring such good grades. The reason is I never earned it. My mom earned them for me. She made most of my art projects to save my time which I could have wasted by making repeated mistakes and failures.

As a mother, she was trying to protect me from shame and guilt, but all she did was take away from me an opportunity to learn and grow. We live in a culture where mistakes are always associated with negative remarks and feelings. As a result, we all dread making mistakes. Mistakes make us go into a loop of negative self-talk.

I see the same pattern when I work with children and their parents. My children live in constant fear of making a mistake. They would look at me to seek reassurance rather than doing something on their own, they would not be willing to try anything new.

I can imagine them in a bubble where they are not making any errors but are stuck without realizing. Parents and teachers also want their children to learn everything, but don’t want them to make any mistakes. They continue to punish mistakes, give humiliating remarks on every error, and not give enough opportunities to learn from them. Despite this, they are always worried that their children give up easily, are always fearful, and never want to try anything new.

I wonder what are  they expecting ? How can you imagine a child trying an activity for the first time without even making a mistake? You took away the very essence of learning, and are now expecting them to try things fearlessly! You induced this fear, maybe not intentionally but you did. No one is born with it.

When you try to save your children from making mistakes, thinking of yourselves as some higher power doing a good deed, all you are doing is creating a generation who seeks perfection at the cost of rejecting the POWER OF OOPS!. Don’t worry, you are not alone. We were never taught to look at mistakes any differently. You are doing, exactly what your parents did to you. But don’t you think it is high time to break this cycle! Mistakes are not at all bad. Trust me.

Mistakes are an integral part of the learning process. You don’t buy this argument, do you? Okay so let’s imagine yourself sitting in a room, all safe and sound. You are not stepping out because you might fail or make a mistake. So you stay inside forever, you are living your life no doubt but do you think you are learning anything or growing? Have you ever learned anything without making a single mistake? If you say Yes, I don’t believe you because we cannot even learn to walk without falling! Don’t feel shameful about your errors. I think we all make mistakes, it is called being HUMAN.

 The mistake is not that we made a mistake, it’s just that we forgot to see the beauty of it.

I know all that analogy won’t work without some scientific facts. So here are some to satisfy your thirst for scientific information. According to a study by Moser, et.al in 2011, the brain sparks and fires every time we make a mistake, even if we are not aware of them because it is a time of challenge and struggle that results in growth.

In another MRI study done at the University of California, researchers found that those who could turn failures into positive experiences had satisfied reward centers in the brain. Researches also show that aversion to making mistakes can be a cause for poor learning habits. These researches prove how important it is to make mistakes to grow.

 I also like to quote lead author Hans Schroder here ” Do not shy away from mistakes but be curious about what went wrong.” To add to it, I would say let children make mistakes. Plenty of them. It is a beautiful sign that they are growing. I hope now you believe me a little.

Next time when your child makes an error, instead of making that angry face, give a hearty smile and maybe you can say that ‘I am glad you made a mistake, and you have just unwrapped a beautiful opportunity to learn.’ Just say this and see the difference yourself. You can also ask your child to keep a MISTAKE JOURNAL where they can brag about their mistakes and what they learned.

You have rushed your child enough and it didn’t work so take a pause , don’t rush after perfectionism. Let the child go on this road of life at their own pace, let them fall, jump, crawl, bump, our job is not to protect them from the challenges they will face. As parents and teachers, our job is to enjoy the process with them. Celebrate with them at every moment, not only the successes but the mistakes as well.

Eventually, your child will learn to embrace their mistake and learn from them and in the future, if your child will ever make a mistake, which they will definitely do, they will not give up, they will laugh over it and carry on with finding solutions.

Teach your child not to stop the oops but to turn them into beautiful oops!