Allow Mistakes
Gauge the coming consequences and either react or do not. If the consequences are too great and the lesson too shallow, you should probably say something.
A failure is not always a mistake, it may simply be the best one can do under the circumstances. The real mistake is to stop trying.
Allow Mistakes
A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new.
By now you know some things. By this time in your life you are no longer figuring out how everything works. You know that if you turn the spigot a certain way, water comes out. You know how to use your arms and your legs. You even know some math and sciences with a bit of English mixed in.
Presumably you also know how to read and how to write. You can ambulate properly, assuming you are in good health. You can feed yourself, you can hold employment, you can even drive, even if you do so in an odd manner.
That’s an awful lot of information you have at your disposal. That all seems trivial, and we can certainly make it trivial, but if you dive into what all that takes, it’s no longer trivial. Those are miracles and blessings, honestly.
But with great knowledge comes great responsibility. Hopefully I take that line out before this book gets published but if it stays in, you’re welcome. You may know a great deal, but that doesn’t mean you should share all of it. That can be a confusing concept and it shouldn’t be applied at all times.
Regardless, it’s true. Despite our great desire for it not to be, it remains so. In the face of great wailing and gnashing of teeth in an attempt to make it untrue, to our great lament, an excess of vocalized learned enumerations can become a disservice to us and those around us.
Teach your kids that: Success is not final; failure is not fatal; it’s the courage to continue that counts.
Winston A. Churchill
Take a toddler, for example. They have issues using their limbs effectively. This is due to them not having them for long enough and, on occasion, because they haven’t been allowed to explore enough or try things out for themselves.
By this time in their lives it is possible for them to do many things modern toddlers don’t normally get the chance to do. If you take a look at history, it was not uncommon to see a three year old helping their family sweep chimneys. Think about a three year old you know or have known. Does it seem like they’d be anything but a detriment on a job-site? Likely not.
But it’s possible. People are capable of amazing things from time to time, if only they’re allowed the attempt. And this is where mistakes come in. People need to make mistakes. You need to make mistakes. It’s natural and necessary. Without making mistakes, you cannot learn.
Even a mistake may turn out to be the one thing necessary to a worthwhile achievement.
But what if you see a mistake someone is about to make? Do you warn them? Do you tell them of the imminent or coming mistake? That depends. There are a few things to consider here.
You may want to weigh some pros and cons in each scenario, though that’s not always possible. If someone is running towards traffic and risks dying, you may want to intervene and warn them of this possibility.
However, if someone is attempting to figure out a problem for homework and they’re about to make a mistake in the attempt, that may be something to overlook and allow them to realize themselves.
If you stop every mistake before it happens, people won’t learn for themselves. You cannot be around for every moment and every event in their life, so you’re doing them a disservice not allowing them to fail.
Should they stop running down the street? Probably. Have you told them this before and yet they’re doing it again? If so, let them fall. They were given the lesson once, for free. This one will cost them some skin on their knee.
They will be fine. Skinned knees teach us an awful lot. And, perhaps, that will cause them to become discerning in the scenarios they choose to sprint and those they decide it may not be the greatest idea.
This applies to more than life or death, homework, and skinned knees. It applies to just about every aspect of life. Sometimes people just need to learn on their own, and you must let them.
When you don’t, you rob them of their agency. Robbing someone of their capacity for choice is a quick way to push them away from you and directly into the danger you tried to save them from.
It has additional ramifications, too. You can become insufferable. This will happen if you correct everything, all the time. Did someone use improper grammar? Did someone use a word out of proper context? How is their diction? Are they enunciating? Were their facts transposed? Have they taken a proper look at all the potentials in a situation they’re passing judgment on?
These are all valid questions and valid places they can be corrected if needed. But that last part is crucial. If needed. If they got some words mixed up in their head but know how something should have been said, why correct them? If they slipped up pronouncing a word, why correct them? Is there a need? How do you know?
That will be up to you to decide, but err on the side of leaving it alone. That is unless they ask you about it specifically, if their life depends on it, or some other ramification is involved that isn’t reversible or survivable. You may know an awful lot, but you don’t have to shove it in everyone’s face all the time.
That will cause them to hesitate when they want to say something and you’re around. It will also cause them to hesitate being around you, too. There are many detrimental aspects to becoming insufferable and none of them are objectively good.
Sure, they may know a few more things and their diction may have improved, but now you’re impossible to associate with. Sometimes you have to be okay with things being imperfect.
You have to be okay with others being human.
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