TheTeenDoc.com

Changing the World One Teen at a Time

Cleaning up or even preventing your teen’s mistakes doesn’t make your teen’s life easier. Instead, it can make them dependent on you. Mistakes are the learning opportunity of life. To truly live life your teen needs to know they are capable. So although some mistakes are very painful, they serve to show your teen’s resilience.  These are three things they can learn from their mistakes:

1. Mastery

There is nothing like good old fashioned practice to make you better. Whether it’s a math problem, a project, a guitar riff or a relationship, practice is what makes you better. Your teen can’t get better if you do the work for them. The same way you watched them struggle to feed themselves and knew it would be easier (and neater) if you just did it yourself, is the same way you have to watch them stumble, get back up and stumble again to finally figure out how not to fall.

2. Confidence

With mastery comes confidence. “Hey I was able to get through the hardest class in my life, Calculus. I can do this!” When you do it for them whether it’s a college application or setting up their summer job, they are deprived of this confidence and remain dependent on you to get the work  done. With each problem, challenge or self-discovery, your teen gets better, stronger and more confident. They are less fearful of new challenges like leaving for college, getting their first apartment or taking a risk with their career.

3. Failure

There is beauty in failure too! It doesn’t feel as good, but your teen can learn a lot from it as well. You can read my post on Failure an Opportunity for more information.  Teens that experience their first failures in college or later in life have a difficult time recovering, whereas the opportunity to learn from failure teaches your teen they are stronger than they think. They know they can get through tough times and end up better, stronger, more compassionate about other’s failures and much more capable. This alone can make them more confident about whatever is down the road whether you are there or not.

When you let your teen make their mistakes, you help prepare them for the world.  They’re more independent. Of course this doesn’t mean that you’re not suppose to give them a hug when they make mistakes, it just means you don’t rush in to take away the experience of the mistakes!

Related posts:

1. Failure an Opportunity for Teens
2. What Can Parents Learn From Tiger?
3. Your Teen Is Not Their Failure
4. Should you give Your Teen Advice?
5. Teens Earn More Than Pay At Retail Jobs