Tips For Handling Your Child’s (Inevitable!) Mistakes or Frustration
Your child will make mistakes. Lots of them. Growing up is hard work. The key is to help your child manage his frustration and to turn each situation (even the ones filled with mistakes) into positive learning experiences. Through the years, I have learned the importance of acknowledging a child’s efforts (and not just the outcome) as a key way to help a child manage feelings of disappointment or failure.
Acknowledge your child’s efforts, not just the outcome.
Skill mastery takes practice and develops in little steps. Some children may consistently make small gains forward. But, these individual steps forward might be so small that these children do not even notice that they are making progress and become frustrated.
Other children may struggle with a task for days or weeks and then, seemingly overnight, completely master the skill. During those initial days or week, when little or no progress is being made, these children are likely to become frustrated and may give up.
Because it will take many steps for your child to achieve a desired outcome, it is important to acknowledge and appreciate his effort, not just the outcome. For example, when your child first tries to use scissors, comments such as, “I can see that you are really trying,” “Your fingers are almost in the correct positions,” or “I know this is difficult but you are doing a wonderful job of not giving up” are critical to encourage perseverance.
By letting your child know that you are pleased with his efforts and proud of his persistence, you can help him feel successful even before he ultimately achieves success. This encouragement will entice him to continue trying which increases the likelihood that he will be successful.
If you wait until after your child has mastered the task to offer praise, there are two possible but negative outcomes:
- Your child may become frustrated by his inability to achieve instant success and give up.
- Your child may hesitate to engage in an activity unless he feels certain he will succeed on his first or second try.
When this happens, your child risks beginning a self-fulfilling cycle of failure.
Try this at home
Often I encounter a child who is struggling and becoming frustrated or disheartened despite my best efforts to sincerely praise and encourage him. When this occurs, I turn to the amazing magic of… a video camera!
Begin by filming your child working with a certain tool or on a particular activity. If he asks, which my children always did, you can show him the video after he is done working. Just don’t delete it. Then, the next time you see your child becoming frustrated with his lack of progress or inability to complete a certain task, play back an earlier tape. Seeing himself working on the video on a more basic skill will reinforce for him how much progress he has made.
As you watch the tape together, ask your child to explain to you what he is doing in the video. Then comment on the perseverance your child was showing in the video and how he didn’t give up, even though he may have been struggling. Relay your confidence that it won’t be long before your child has mastered the task he is currently struggling with, just as he mastered the task he was struggling with in the video. As your child laughs and marvels at how he struggled with what is now a task he easily completes, he will be reminded of the many small steps that go into achieving an ultimate goal and the importance of perseverance.
What can you share with other parents?
What skills has your child worked for days or weeks to master? And what skills did he seemingly master overnight? How did you encourage your child to keep trying a challenging skill and not give up? How did you celebrate when he finally mastered something he had been working on for a while?
