Recipe for Success

I've been taking a class the past few months about fine tuning our family vision, focus, systems, attitudes. It's been quite awesome. We've created a family mission statement. I've been reading, A House United: Teaching Children Self Government, by Nicholeen Peck, and I've been working really hard at how I instruct the kids and get them to do things through using the power of "calm"...she has some pretty cool techniques like how to effectively give a child an instruction but also giving them the option to "disagree appropriately." It really cuts down on whining and complaining and yelling on my part. It's awesome.

I just need to work on consistency. Still lacking in that department.

My mentor just asked the following question and I felt a desire to share my answer: 

What does it mean to let a child fail. Is it ever appropriate? When wouldn't it be?

I believe it is absolutely appropriate to allow our children to fail and not raise them in such a way that they feel entitled to doing things right and succeeding. There are several ways we can do it. One father I know purposely sets up challenges for his kids that are just beyond their capability. If they succeed, the success is very sweet. If they fail, they learn. That may be extreme, but once I learned why he does it, it makes sense. He doesn't want his children to be afraid of failure. He wants them to realize that failure is an important part of the pathway to success. And he doesn't do it maliciously or as a punishment or to get a power trip (all of which would be wrong reasons to allow your children to fail), but he does it as a way to teach his children.

Most people who succeed in life only do so after failure, after failure, after failure. The Facebook-idea-turns-college-boy-billionaire scenario happens very rarely. But so many of us look to that kind of example and hope for easy success like that in our own lives. We forget that most successful people in history had to accept their failures time and time again. Thomas Edison tried over 1000 different ideas of materials and bulb shapes before he successfully created the electric light bulb. Michael Jordan is slated to have a quote about failure leading to success. And there are so many more examples.

Our children shouldn't be afraid of failure. If they have experience with it, they won't be. And when they fail, they won't stay down for long and they won't sink into depression. They'll use their minds to figure out what went wrong and try it again. Or realize they lack experience and knowledge and seek to obtain those things. I think the best ways to teach failure are through natural consequences of ideas they have especially if you show them confidence that the next time they try, they will do it better (that idea for the lizard trap was awesome…for some reason, though, it just didn't catch a lizard…try a new design! So your lemonade stand didn't sell much lemonade. What can you do differently next time?) Another way to teach failure is consequences in the home for disobeying family rules. Isn't that an opportunity to ask the kids to carry out the consequence and try again to follow the rules, try again to succeed?

Of course, we should definitely allow our children many opportunities to succeed so they don't think that life is full of disappointment. And we also need to accept their own feelings of success as adequate. For example, my kids love to play soccer during the soccer season. However, we have never measured their success on the field by the number of goals they make. And that's a good thing, because they hardly ever score. In fact, I don't remember any of them scoring this year, except when my 5yo daughter accidentally scored for the other team. But they all enjoyed playing on a team, exercising, and being a part of something for themselves. My oldest learned a lot of new skills and became more aggressive and confident on the field. In each of their own eyes, the season was a success. I shouldn't label it as a failure because they didn't score goals. I should celebrate their feelings of success, too.

As I've been writing this, I've realized that one aspect of failure is sin. Of course we don't want our kids to ever sin. But we can't expect that. Some of our kids will sin very grievously. So…do we sink into depression? Do they sink into depression? Do we cut them off? Do we feel ashamed for their actions and feel like we didn't measure up as parents? Those are all signs of accepting the failure and not seeking for success. Or, do we teach them that they can alway turn to the Savior so when they are trapped in sin, they will know where to turn eventually? Do we, ourselves, seek for the Savior's help in showing them love and not anger/frustration/contempt for their actions? Do we seek the Savior, as did Alma the Older, to turn our child's heart back to Him? Should we not ever give up? Those are seeds of success through the power of the Atonement.