Teach your kids that the path to success is paved with smart failures.
FAIL - For All I Learned
Are you teaching your kids to fail?
As parents and educators it’s so easy to praise, cheer and encourage success, but what happens when your little scientist or engineer fails? Will you clap just as enthusiastically? If not, you should give it a try. Why? Because there is far more failure behind EVERY design success, medical advance or technological endeavor than there are successful results. EVERY scientist will tell you that failure is part of the process...in fact it’s imperative. The term experiment implies trying, failing and trying again. Spoon-feeding our children solutions to protect them from experiencing failure, prevents them from giving their problem solving muscles a workout. More importantly, if they are taught that failing is bad, they may just stop trying all together...and NONE of us want that!
STEM education is only as good as the failure we encourage.
How can you encourage failure?
Be vulnerable and share your own failures.
Whether it’s a recipe, math problem or science experiment, embrace the process not just the outcome.
Share more stories of failed science experiments from well known scientists.
Ask “what do you think would happen if...?” and then follow through.
Most importantly, keep asking your kids (and yourself), “What’s to be learned here? And how can we apply that learning next time?”
Happy failing!
Check out this great video on failing, MJ style! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JA7G7AV-LT8
"I've missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I've been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I've failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed." ― Michael Jordan