Good Mistakes

 I’m sitting here ripping out a seam in a dress that I'm sewing. I skipped a step and messed up. I should have paid more attention. I have made similar mistakes before so I know what I need to do to fix it. Next time I will not make the same mistake.

Several years ago I was a part of a discussion with several moms who were discussing mistakes.  A couple of them stated that when their kids started getting upset about making mistakes or not getting things the first time, they would show their kids the movie Meet the Robinsons; particularly the scene where they celebrate failures. 

One of the greatest tips I have gotten as a teacher and mom was, “Let them see you make mistakes.”  When children see you make mistakes, you appear more… ‘like them’. The value doesn’t stop there though.  Kids and students of all ages need to see how you react to those mistakes.  Do you get upset and quit? Do you verbalize frustration then get to work cleaning up the mess? Do you pause and analyze what happened and problem solve what to do about it?  Do you approach it as a learning opportunity?  A combination of those?

As a parent, if I spilled my coffee I would say “Boogers!”, take a deep breath and start cleaning it up.  I often told my little ones, “When you make a mess, you clean it up,” when it was time to pick up their toys or just made a mess. As I’m cleaning my coffee I vocalize again, “When I make a mess, I clean it up; right?” As my kids got older, they knew the expectation and now as young adults they know to clean up after themselves. A little harder was admitting when I was wrong and not hiding my mistakes.  I’m not going to fantasize that my kids haven't hidden things from me, but they have made some hard admissions. At one time, when we were homeschooling, my oldest came to me and admitted that they had cheated on math.  In fact, they had been just copying the answers instead of doing the work for quite some time.  My dear child realized that the math was getting progressively harder and since they hadn’t been doing the work they didn’t understand it well.  I thanked them for admitting it and asked what they thought was the best way to move forward from here.  They suggested that they go back to where they started cheating and redo all that work before moving on.  It was like the knitting project I had been working on a few days before when I realized that I had made a mistake early on and grumbled a little before stating, “It’s better to start over than chase this mistake and have it come out messy.”

I did the same with my students in the classroom. When I made a math mistake or an err on the board I owned up to it, figured out where I made the mistake, and fixed it.  I remember once I made a mistake and my students started chuckling. I turned to them and we had a frank conversation about how everyone makes mistakes, even adults. We talked about how we want others to respond when we make mistakes and appropriate responses when others make mistakes. Then we talked about how to learn from our mistakes. Based on the conversation, I don’t know if any of those students had ever been told that it is okay to make mistakes. For the rest of the year the idea that mistakes were learning opportunities, everyone makes them, and they are not all bad came up a lot. I even referred to it when behavior issues arose. 

After that year, this is one of the first things that I address in my classroom.  I tell my students, I won’t get mad over honest mistakes, I might be disappointed if you knew better, but what matters most to me is that you learn from those mistakes. What you learn from your mistakes can make you better, stronger, and smarter if you let it.