First Response

  One of the hardest things for a parent to do is watch their child fail. It doesn't matter how big or small the fail is, it punches us in the stomach and hurts our heart. Yet they need to learn failure. And we need to let them. No matter how much it hurts.

  Failure is a part of living. We've all experienced it. Some people handle it better than others. There is no way to teach our kids how to handle it except by example. And since most of us don't handle it well we probably aren't the best role models.

  When Alex realized his marks weren't going to be what he wanted or expected we had to decide our reaction. Do we ground him and take away privileges? Yell and scream and tell him how irresponsible he is? Those are the things our parents would have done. We went in the opposite direction.

  There were no loud voices. No harsh words. No tears. Just an honest discussion about focus, commitment, and hard work. Then how to go on from this. Dealing with the consequences and figuring out the next step. And you know what? Alex mimicked our response. He was respectful and soft-spoken. Lesson learned...for both of us.

  It's easy to lose our minds. I do it on a nearly daily basis with my kids. But I know we handled this right. And most importantly his first taste of failure was met with the adult response it should have been. Some days we really have this parenting thing down pat!

  Other days....not so much.

  Ang