I want to have a little talk about mistakes. Pull up a chair.When you’re a kid, you learn what a “mistake” is from your parents’ reactions (or those of other “adults” in your young social network). You just dropped a glass and it shattered all over the kitchen floor. Are your parents reaching for the party hats and clapping or are they giving you their stern face and handing you the broom? Option B? Probably a mistake then.

This is how it’s supposed to be. Kids have to get their sense of right and wrong from somewhere and it’s usually taught by a child’s environment growing up. 

We aren’t born with the innate fear of red ink and love of star stickers, it’s drilled into us over the years of returned test papers.However, just because this knowledge of the mistake/not mistake dichotomy isn’t innate doesn’t mean it’s not real or powerful. (Evidence: stick a star sticker on my hand, accompany it with any form of praise, and my almost-thirty-year-old butt will still break out the happy dance.)

The mistake paradigm for a child is simple. You will know a mistake because it is usually followed by a punishment or negative response of some kind. Older children begin to preemptively recognize mistakes due to past negative responses to similar actions. Enter my two old friends: shame and guilt. (Psychology geek’s note: these are actually two very different things, but in this specific context they go hand in hand so I won’t make you sit through the explanation.)Anyway, this paradigm is good, not just for a child, but for the society that has to deal with children. It keeps children attempting to get good grades and minimizes the spiking of milk glasses everywhere. 

In short: feeling bad about mistakes helps keeps these tiny monsters we call children in control.  The problem is, as children turn into small adults the nature of mistakes starts to change.   

This usually happens somewhere in the awful middle school years.  Instead of things the child doesn’t know are wrong, mistakes become things the child knows are wrong, probably already feels bad about, and over which the child probably doesn’t feel they have complete control.As an example, my 7th grader recently came home and (upon some pretty intense maternal grilling) admitted that she got five points off on her math midterm. 

Not bad, right?  Nuh uh.  This ain’t my first rodeo,   

Out of how many questions?  Out of fifteen. 

Okay, well that’s a D.  Let’s have a talk.

Well, she went on to her weekend of fun plans and I began stewing about this D, but the problem about which I actually ended up ruminating was the fact that she had tried so hard to hide the bad grade.

I may be developing a pretty forceful mom glare *curtseys and queen waves*, but nothing actually happens when she gets a bad grade.  We don’t beat her, starve her, hang her upside-down from the ceiling, or even take away her phone when she gets a bad grade, so if you’re going based on the “little kid” definition of mistake (the one in which kids only feel bad about punishable offenses) she shouldn’t be upset about this.  

What changed?

Well, the “big kid” definition of mistakes is a bit different.  By the time kids are in middle school they have internalized (yes, that’s the actual psychology term for it) the value system you’ve been drilling into them all of these years.  They know bad grades are bad, helping others is good, don’t drop milk glasses, and all those yummy things about which we scold our toddlers.  They no longer need us to guilt them for their mistakes, they do it themselves.

Sometimes it really doesn’t look like it, but unless you’ve managed to raise a complete sociopath (you haven’t) they do actually care.  They’re just putting up a front.  In the case of my preteen, she doesn’t appear to care, but I know she does because she still gets embarrassed to say her bad scores out loud.  She usually attempts to convey them using some kind of sound effect/pantomime compilation until I tell her to just spit it out.  This means she’s already raking herself over the coals for it, so I don’t have to do it myself.

*dusts off hands*

Now how do we deal with mistakes in the “big kid” paradigm?  There are two basic, yet very important rules for this brave new world.  I’ll give them to you and then explain the new paradigm.

 

Now, while you percolate on those, here’s all you need to know about “big kid” or “adult” mistakes.  Unlike toddler mistakes, adult mistakes don’t usually come with external punishments.  Lose your job?  Get pregnant by accident?  Get in a car crash?  Usually, if these things happen when you’re older, your mom isn’t going to come walking in with a stern look and the time out chair. 

No one cares because they’re busy adulting too.

Adult mistakes are characterized not by external punishments, but by individual consequences.  Take the car accident for example.  No, your mom isn’t going to give you a talk if you’re 30 and crash your car.  However, your consequences are the long calls with the insurance agency, the days without transportation, the financial detriments, and possibly even some physical discomfort or medical expenses.  Welcome to the adult world. 

No one punishes you if you make a mistake, but mistakes are their own punishments. 

This is what we need to communicate to our kids when they get to this transition-y age, but usually we’re so used to the toddler mistake model we just keep on mom-glaring at them until the laser beams that come out of our eyes get sore.  (I’m just as guilty of this as the rest of you.  My mom-beams are exhausted at the end of the day.)

So, at 3:15 when I pick up my kid and she tells me about a bad grade, I get to work on teaching her how to handle mistakes as an adult.  First, she has to learn how to own her mistakes.  

This doesn’t mean be proud of a bad grade, but by denying something happened, by making excuses to save our fragile egos, or by blaming luck (or the test, or the teacher, or the distracting kid behind us….the list goes on) we are denying ourselves the opportunity to learn something.  Learning is the only good thing that comes from a mistake, so if we don’t learn, then the whole thing was for nothing.  

So there’s new rule #714 in our house, she now has to say the grade she got out loud.  Admit it, own it.  “I got a 65%.”  Great, now we’re ready for step two.

Once you’ve owned your mistake, you can now dissect it to see what you can do to help keep it from happening again.  Ever watch a baby learn how to walk?  They learn by falling down.  Over.  And over.  And over.  They aren’t upset by it, they just learn from each mistake and get a little better the next time.What?  I can’t run with both my feet in the same pants leg?  Interesting.  Noted.  Take #762 then…Adults can emulate this too.

Once we’ve owned a mistake and gotten out of the way whatever shame/guilt/hair-pulling that comes with it, we’re ready to clinically (and as rationally as possible) dissect what made it happen.

Failed a test.  Did you study last minute?  Could you have used a different strategy?  Did you prioritize other homework?  Could you study in a different way?  It is the questions we ask in the “mistake dissection” process which will keep us from repeating a mistake. 

 

This is how the adult world works.  Usually, no one yells at us for mistakes.  The mistakes are their own punishments, but if you handle them right, they can be assets to the learning process. 

 

And now if I could only explain this to my middle schooler.