Failure

Failure

It's the hardest thing to learn and the hardest thing to teach. It's inevitable that one day our children will fail at something. It's inevitable that one day, we will fail them. Yes. Inevitable.

My six year old, Princess Kayla, has the hardest time with losing games. It's all about having fun until someone else wins. :0) Do you have this child?

My ten year old is experiencing her first taste of failures at school. (Oh Lordy!) It's really hard for me as a mom to balance out the "do your best" with the "If you don't pass school, I'm gonna kill you!" emotions. The main reason is because as parents we don't want to accept that our children might fail. At anything.

They will. Prepare yourself now.

But so will you. So have I. I have had that sneaking, haunting suspicion that when I didn't take the opportunity to sit my child down daily to do extra homework....I failed her. When I stopped playing games out of frustration of having to console and explain each and every time that losing is part of playing and playing is just for fun....I failed her. Every time I say "no" to something simple because of my headache/fatigue/whatever, I start to feel like a failure.

Failure is a part of life, but the thing is that we must grow and learn from it. It's hard to repeat, but I do. I constantly tell my children that if they fail, they must try again and change the outcome. There has to be a change, regardless of what it is that they fail at.

So, if you are feeling like a failure, get used to it. :0) And then change something. Even if the only thing  you change is your attitude. We can't all be perfect all the time. Right? This applies to parenthood too.