Topic - Teaching Kids Resilience. He was learning to walk and had the inevitable crashes. But, when he fell down, he watched my reaction.
If I gasped and asked if he was alright, he cried. I couldn’t control my gasp, but quickly learned to cover it with a big smile, applause and a hearty, “Good falling!” He never cried after that unless he was really hurt.
If Dan never took risks, he’d never learn. If we rescued him, he wouldn’t master life’s lessons. So, we shifted gears.
Dan fell, fell and fell again. He learned to hold his head up when he hit so he wouldn’t lose teeth or need stitches. He learned to walk, and run and fly.
We shared the lessons from our own mistakes and got out of his way so he could experience disappointments.
We learned to be realistic about what he could and could not do. We didn’t rave too much. If he wanted to go, we found a way to make it happen.
He’s now a man who knows how to fall and more importantly, how to get up and dust himself off. Don’t always catch them.
