Soulful Parenting is positive parenting. Anyone who has been exposed to Soulful Parenting for very long has heard how strong the tendency is for parents and teachers to be critical with their kids as opposed to being positive and reinforcing.
For example, the data suggests that parents criticize ten times more than they positively reinforce. Besides being demoralizing to our kids and discouraging of healthy relationships, the core of Soulful Parenting, we also now know that by focusing on the criticizing the mistakes and failures we are inhibiting their ability to learn.
That’s right, we all learn more from mistakes than we do from successes. Wisdom and knowledge come from neural adjustments made after mistakes. So it is literally true that the wisest and the brightest are often those who have been willing to take chances and make mistakes.
But we adults tend to criticize mistakes and reward only successes. Mistakes aren’t to be avoided they are to be cultivated and investigated. Mistakes are the seeds of learning. We need to focus less on the outcome, the mistake, and more on the effort made and the lesson to be learned from the mistake.
So reinforce your kid more. Tell them you appreciate their effort even when their performance is not successful. Encourage them to try things even if they think they can’t do it. Let them know that a mistake is not a bad thing but rather a golden opportunity to learn. The more they try and the more that they make mistakes and learn from them the better their ability to learn in the future. And, in the end, the more knowledge and wisdom they will have. What parent wouldn’t want that for their kid?