Falling Down…

The other day I went with my daughter to her first ice skating lesson.  I grew up in the south and didn’t have a ton of ice skating rinks to practice on so I watched with interest as she began her “skating career”.

It was interesting because the very first thing they taught was failure.

Everyone got in a circle (she hadn’t even gotten on the ice, yet) and they made them sit on the floor.  They then showed them how to stand up without using their hands.

I wondered why using their hands was a “no-no”, but the more you think about it, if you put your hands on the ice you are more likely to get them cut off by someone else’s blades.  Also, if you can stand up without your hands on the ice you are more likely to maintain your balance.

It was interesting that they didn’t even start on the ice.  They started in a familiar environment (non-slickery, non-wet planet Earth) and taught the kids how to fail and recover in their normal environment.

So many times we start out trying to teach our kids how to succeed.  We know that our kids have a 100% chance that they will fail at some point in time, but we don’t teach them how to handle failure.  We try to get their eyes off of failure and by doing so we don’t teach them how to recover.

Recovery from failure is a key to success.   

Have you ever known someone who lost one game, whether it was Monopoly or Uno and they just gave up?  

We have a name for them…”sore-loser”…  

However, the individual that loses and recovers to win some other time has a name too…”courageous”…

What are you teaching?

Success, failure and recovery or success, failure and depression.

       Learn and teach your kids how to fail and recover.