Where's the humor?
“Celebrate your successes, Find some humor in your failures. Don’t take yourself so seriously…” —Sam Walton, founder of Wal-Mart (from Start with Why by Simon Sinek).
It would be easiest when we fail to throw our hands up, say “well, I’m out” and move on to something else. Thomas Edison is reputed to have said that he had X thousands of tries that didn’t work before he invented the light bulb. See Edison, didn’t view them as failures; he viewed them as stepping stones to the final product. Each time he took what worked and played it up until he had a light bulb. Walton is basically getting at the same idea.
When I was in the 7th grade I played for my school’s soccer team. I was so bad that I was asked at the end of the year to not return as even the ball girl. Ouch! Even then I laughed at myself (and my parents too). Team sports weren’t my thing and never would be (heck not anyone in my family played a team sport unless you count my father being on his high school’s golf team). This was Walton’s point. Beyond learning from our failures, we need to take them for what they are and laugh if necessary.
I have tried over the years to instill this in my daughter— failures teach us what not to do and how to be humble. In the course of my life, when things didn’t work out, I have always asked myself “why?” Even with my divorce, I did this and it helped my daughter and me.
As parents, we need to let our children fail and learn from their failures. If we pick up the pieces every time and help them out, they will not learn to be responsible for their actions words, failures, etc. On a related note, we can’t do everything for our children or come running every time they need us. I have had to learn to say “no” to my daughter. Recently when it was raining, my daughter asked if we could drive to meet her friends. She would be driving there and I would drive back. Since I had no desire to drive in the rain, I said, “no.” Later that night I got a call from her about how wet her shoes were (the next day the canvas sneakers needed to be put in the dryer). Oh well!
The moral of all this is to let kids be kids and learn from their mistakes so they learn responsibility, how to do things by themselves and to laugh at themselves. Now if only I had the foresight to do a side-by-side washer and dryer, my petite daughter would be able to turn on the dryer. On our stackable set, the buttons are too high for her. Oh, well!