One of the hardest things to do as a parent is to watch our children fail. And yet, failure is an inevitable part of all our lives. Failure is also an indisputable component of success.
The temptation is to correct the mistakes in their homework, finish their art and science projects so theirs can be the best in the class, and protect them from failure every chance we get. But all of these are parenting mistakes.
It’s hard to watch them make mistakes, it excruciating to let them fail, but little mistakes now massively increase the chances that they won’t make big mistakes later, and little failures now massively increase the chances that they won’t have big failures later.
The biggest mistake we can make as parents is trying to prepare life for our children, by smoothing the path in front of them. Our job as parents isn’t to prepare the path for our children, it’s to prepare our children for the path.
Matthew Kelly
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