To Err is Human; to Forgive (Ourselves), Divine

Photo by Jeffrey F Lin on Unsplash. Match shown is at the Naval Academy at Annapolis.

“Failure is part of life, whether we learn from it or not.”
~ Claudia Luiz 

A friend and I have been having a discussion this week about parenting, and the mistakes we’ve made. Both of us grew up in environments with lots of rules (or “shoulds”), and exceedingly high expectations. Although each of us was determined to loosen the reigns a bit with our own kids, we realize now that we only partly succeeded. We were still too heavily invested in our own visions for our kids, wrongly believing how they turned out was a reflection on us.  

I’ll never forget the day my son told me that all I cared about was his grades, and not him. Ouch. Of course I cared about him and his well-being more than his grades, but that’s not the message he was receiving. It was a moment of reckoning for me, for sure, and I resolved to do better.

My friend and I have both spent a lifetime studying psychology, and we understand better now how unique each child is, and that the best parenting involves helping kids decide for themselves who they are and what’s important to them. While it’s necessary for parents and teachers to have some expectations, it’s not okay to try to mold kids in a way that squashes who they are.

I’m sure many of you can relate to the feeling of wishing we’d known then what we know now. Fortunately, parenting never really ends, and there’s still time to correct some of our mistakes.

A few days after our discussion, I received a newsletter from my psychoanalyst friend Claudia Luiz about an online workshop called “The Art of the Fail.“ One of the points made in the promo email is that failure is a side-effect of “being in the game.” In other words, because we’re fully engaged, and we’re trying, we’re going to slip up.

Those words really struck me, and I’ve been thinking about them all week.

Failure is a side-effect of life!

No one is perfect.

Everyone makes mistakes.

We know this, intellectually. But we don’t really believe it about ourselves. Or at least we certainly don’t act like we do. We act like we’re supposed to be perfect at all times, and we don’t handle it well when we mess up.

(Well, most of us. I have met on occasion that rare, self-assured person who just laughs at her mistakes and moves on. As a perfectionist, I find it an enviable trait.)

How many times have you gotten defensive in the last week because someone pointed out that you did something wrong? Or embarrassed because you realized yourself that you screwed up?

How many times was the pain of realizing you messed up so intense, you pointed out something the other person did wrong in order to deflect it?

Without meaning to, we do damage to our relationships because it hurts too much to accept that we’ve done something wrong.

Our egos get in the way.

Later in the week I continued the conversation with another friend over margaritas. She has a college-age son, and was regretting something she’d said to him. I reminded her that it’s not too late to go back and apologize to him. She had slipped into parenting mode, forgetting that he’s old enough to start making his own decisions. If you have grown kids, you know that transition from parent to consultant is not an easy one.

She and I often remind each other to take the step to fix something with our kids when we feel like we’ve messed up. It’s not something my parents’ generation did, but it’s such a powerful offering to children of any age, especially young adults. By admitting that we’re not perfect, and apologizing, we’re showing them that it’s okay to get something wrong and ask for a do-over. We’re prioritizing their feelings over our egos.

Thankfully even very young kids are being taught in school how to handle their emotions. One of our grandsons has been learning at daycare how to deal with mishaps. When he spills his apple juice at the dinner table, and starts to get upset, his mom reminds him of what he learned in school—to say to himself, “Oops, I made a mistake. Everybody makes mistakes.” Even better, the next step is to ask himself, “What do I need to do to fix it?” He remembers that he just needs to get a towel and wipe it up. For mistakes that hurt other people, he’s learned that he has to apologize.

It actually doesn’t need to be any more complicated than that.

We don’t have to beat ourselves up about our transgression. We don’t have to take it on, or take it in. As my daughter’s soccer coach used to say to the girls when they made an error in a match: “just brush it off and keep going.”

For many of us, our overreaction to being called out for making a mistake has to do with the shaming we received as kids. How wonderful that a new generation of kids is learning that mistakes and failures are not the end of the world. They are simply a part of learning and growing, and “being in the game.”

Affectionately,

Elaine