Learning to Let Go: Allowing Our Kids to Make Mistakes

When I reflect on some of our biggest challenges in parenting, one thing stands out the most to me: our own struggles with perfectionism.

Phil and I both are perfectionist to a fault- Phil definitely worse than I. We both want things done a certain way and have a hard time when that doesn’t necessarily happen. We often give too many “rules” or too many “be careful’s” in certain situations, instead of allowing our kids to navigate through things themselves. And this unexpected part of parenting has truly been difficult for us.

This past week, Jax had his first big project due at school. A full cut out character to be made along with a written report. Now I know I’m not alone when I say, moments like these create full on battles at home for some of us!

Leaving Room for Our Kids to Navigate the World

Of course there are moments where teaching your children of potential danger is required. Ya know, approaching a street, staying close in a store, learning to use scissors, knives, etc. However, we were finding ourselves cautioning and over-teaching our kids everything!

Of course there are consequences in all of those! A scrapped knee, a bumped head, no more paint, etc. And of course, it’s okay to teach your children all of these things. But what we found by over using “be careful” or “don’t do…” constantly is how little risk taking our children were likely to do. Our oldest is the least risk taker of the bunch. So much so, that he second guessed everything at one point. Am I doing it right? Is this how you do it? He was constantly looking to us for validation in everything he did, despite us encouraging him to try on his own all the time!

We took a few steps back with each kid, realizing the impact it had our first go around (those first kids really are the test children in this, huh? 🤣). We weren’t allowing our children to take their own risks. We weren’t allowing them to try, fail, and grow on their own. We were slowly taking away opportunities for them to build their confidence. (If you haven’t already- check out this post all about building confidence!)

Working Our Way Out of “Over-Teaching”

We watched that fear of risk taking translate into so many activities. Like, not wanting to mix PlayDoh colors, not wanting to spill food, scared to climb around a playground independently, the list goes on…

That’s when I decided to change my mindset and flip the way we were handling situations. Every situation we faced, where I felt the “be careful’s” and “don’t do’s” wanting to slip out, I paused and asked myself:

As an adult, would someone correct me in this situation?

And 9 times out of 10, the answer is no. Allowing children to experience natural consequences is how they learn the world around them. If I spill my dinner food on the floor, nobody is yelling at me. I simply clean it up. So why is that not my approach with our kids? If I’m creating art, nobody is correcting me for mixing the colors up! So why would I stop my child from doing this?

Again, of course, there are exemptions to every rule. And there will always be moments we have to correct our children or help guide them through. But what I have learned is that allowing them to make mistakes, allowing them to take risks and experience minor natural consequences, is very important to building their own confidence from the get-go.