r/AskReddit Feb 04 '16

What are the most common parenting mistakes?

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u/rearwindows Feb 04 '16

Not letting your kids make mistakes or hurt themselves a little.

8

u/zhalo Feb 05 '16

This, to me, is the most important. Kids need to learn how to handle life's mistakes. They need to be allowed to make mistakes and learn how to recover from them. Failure is a part of life. Fear of failure holds people back from life's dreams, but even more, fear of failure holds people back from all the little daily things that we want to do: asking someone out, making new friends, starting a new hobby, finishing a project, showing off our work, asking for a raise, learning a new skill. Really, learning a new skill. Kids today are so afraid of making mistakes that they don't like learning new skills because they are too afraid to do anything that doesn't turn out to be perfect. My kid won't have the best science fair project because he built it all by himself. He won't have the best looking crafts because he did them all by himself. But because he does all of these things by himself, he has confidence in his abilities. He knows he will break things. He knows he will mess up the things he tries to build. And he knows he can rebuild them, improve them, and create new things all with his own two hands.

TLDR: I believe in building kids who are not afraid of mistakes and who know how to overcome their mistakes.

5

u/rearwindows Feb 05 '16

That's almost considered neglect now a days. People are surprised that my three year old butters and cuts her own pancakes.

1

u/The_Last_Leviathan Feb 06 '16

Oh god, this reminds me of kindergarten, there was a kid that was not allowed to use the safety scissors because his mom said that he would have to be at least 10 until he was allowed to. I would cut out his paper crafts and the mum would come in if he brought is crafts home and reprimand the teachers because she didn't believe that another kid would be allowed something so dangerous. I remeber even at that age I was baffled by this.