Learning from Failures at Home

 "Your home should be a place where your children can fail and learn from their failures."

-from Making Children Mind Without Losing Yours by Dr. Kevin Leman

I am reading through Dr. Leman's book right now and am really enjoying it. I read the above quote a couple of days ago and have had it on my mind ever since.
I have been thinking about what it means as a parent for my home to be a place where my children can fail and have so far come up with three things that I think are important in order for my home to be a place where the children can fail and learn from their failures.

1. My children need to see when I fail. Human beings are flawed, sinful beings. I make mistakes, fail to accomplish things, fail to have the right attitude. I certainly don't think parents need to tell their children all the ways they fail all the time but I also don't think parents should put on a persona of having it all right all the time either. My children need to know that I fail so that they can know it's ok that they fail too. They also need to see me exemplify how I learn from my failures so that they, too, can use their failures as a means to grow.

2. My children need to know what failure is. In order for a child to know he has failed he needs to know what is expected. There needs to be a standard. An absolute. And if it's not met - if they fail - the standard cannot be lowered to spare their feelings of failure. (Obviously if you set the standards unrealistically high then you would lower them, but that, I believe, is a different matter.)
I don't think any parent wants to see their child not do well at something, let alone have the child feel like they didn't do well at something, but if the standards we set out for our children continually get lowered because we don't want them to fail they will never learn from their failures. They will never get better.

3. My children need to know that they are loved when they fail. My love for my children is not based on their performance. I want them to do well. I want them to grow and to learn. But when they fail at something my love for them does not change. I do not expect them to fail, but I know that they will.

What do you think of the quote?
And what are your thoughts on creating a home where children can fail and learn from their failures?

My Africa

I read a quote on a friends blog regarding David Livingston's calling to Africa and the amount of time he devoted to that country and I haven't been able to get the thought off my mind all day.

This is the quote I read;

"People talk of the sacrifice I have made in spending so much of my life in Africa...Is that a sacrifice which brings its own blest reward in healthful activity, the consciousness of doing good, peace of mind, and a bright hope of a glorious destiny hereafter? Away with the word in such a view, and with such a thought! It is emphatically no sacrifice. Say rather it is a privilege. Anxiety, sickness, suffering, or danger, now and then, with a foregoing of the common conveniences and charities of this life, may make us pause, and cause the spirit to waver, and the soul to sink, but let this only be for a moment. All these are nothing when compared with the glory which shall hereafter be revealed in, and for, us. I never made a sacrifice. Of this we ought not to talk, when we remember the great sacrifice which HE [Jesus] made who left His Father's throne on high to give Himself for us."

I think it is beautiful.

And then I think of my calling. 

To be his mother.

And his mother.

And then suddenly the quote is no longer simply beautiful but entirely challenging. 

I will never face dangers like David Livingston faced - but my calling - my "Africa" - is my home. My husband. My boys. 

 

And I wonder - am I cultivating an attitude of joy in my service to God that at the end of my life I can say with all honesty "It was never a sacrifice, it was a privilege." 

Linking to Tuesdays Unwrapped

The Little Moments

Judah runs up to me while I am vacuuming.

"Mummy!" He said, in a concerned tone. And then he pointed at Wesley, who was crying in his swing.

Not wanting to stop vacuuming, and yet not wanting to ignore Judah's concern for his brother I asked; "Judah, could you go make Wesley happy for a minute?"

I waited to resume vacuuming, wanting to see if Judah understood me.
I watched Judah charge over to the swing, pick up Wes' paci and stick it in his mouth.

Then he pulled it out, turned it upside down, and stuck it back in. Wesley laughed.

So Judah pulled it out and turned it right way up again and stuck it back in. Wes laughed again.

They played their little game for quite some time - paci in, paci out, paci flipped over, paci back in - over and over. They laughed at each other, smiled at each other and had a brother bonding moment.

The vacuuming didn't get done - I sat on the couch, enjoying them.