Mistakes

A few days ago Bridger was doing some equations in a math workbook. We're not doing math in a systematic, now-we're-going-to-sit-down-and-do-math way, but he had expressed interest in doing more math, so I'd picked the book up for him, along with a preschool math book for Cass which she tore through with relish.

Bridger realized he'd made a mistake on one of the equations, and because he was using crayon, he couldn't obliterate the offending error.

"That's it. I've ruined the whole page. I might as well rip it out and throw it in the trash," he said.

When he is so hard on himself about mistakes, it's hard for me to stay calm and relaxed, in part because I can so relate to that kind of either-or, all-or-nothing, it's-either-perfect-or-it's-shit thinking. I can see from my own experience that life is so much easier and more productive, so much more fun, when I can see mistakes as a natural part of any learning process, any life experience, really. I wish I could wave a magic wand and give him the perspective on mistakes I'm beginning to have at 40 so that he doesn't have to suffer through mistakes so much.

But deep down, I'm realizing that he's going to have to come to his own reckoning with imperfection. All I can do is hold him as compassionately as possible through his struggles and successes and try to remember to model healthy ways of dealing with mistakes (I am, after all, the woman who said the other day, "I feel like a dummy" when I realized I'd made a scheduling mistake that was going to inconvenience another person. And I said it in earshot of Bridger. Oops.).

When Bridger was feeling frustrated about the math book, I put my hand on his shoulder and said, "You know, the whole point of doing equations in a math book like you're doing is that it gives you opportunities to make mistakes, and that's how you can learn. If you don't ever try them, you don't get the chances to make mistakes."

He didn't have any "A-ha!" moment that freed him from perfectionism forevermore. At least, I don't know if he did. As I once remarked to him, he and Cassidy are sort of like icebergs for me--I see only a small fraction of who they are, and so much of who they are is a hidden mystery. He did close the book without ripping out the page and throwing it in the trash, though.

It struck me later that if there's any gift our homeschooling choice offers our kids, it's that attitude, or at least my heartfelt attempt at that attitude: that mistakes can be opportunities for learning and growth. At school, I suspect, many good teachers try to welcome mistakes, but the pressure to see mistakes as road blocks to learning, as obstacles to be gotten around, as faults to be corrected, is systemically so great. The pressure to correct mistakes within a certain time frame makes it hard, too, to relax when mistakes come up.

I don't think homeschooling is perfect. I can't offer my kids a foreign-language immersion experience, or state-of-the-art science and art materials, or daily contact with lots of other children from a variety of backgrounds, or a feeling of being part of a school community. What I can offer is lots of reassurances, repeated over many years, that mistakes are not something we have to fear, but something we can learn, if we let ourselves, to welcome.