Making Mistakes – Kids will be kids

Its inevitable when you have kids to learn to deal with them making mistakes.

Confronted with this dilemma we basically have two options to choose from and unfortunately all too many of us make the wrong selection, probably based on how we were brought up and/or what the other 95% of society does.

Out of love and not wanting our kids to make mistakes, we punish them when they do, with the idea that this will deter them from making further mistakes.

The problem with this rationale is that what we are in fact doing is hindering a learning environment while promoting defensiveness and lies. Kids who fear punishment or loss of love for making mistakes, learn to hide those mistakes.

On the other hand we can make choices that help our kids learn from their mistakes and improve upon them, by accepting the notion that they are doing their best and that they’ll learn faster in an environment that does not punish mistakes; by providing structured learning environments were you can minimize the mistakes they can make; and by being a model in how we react to making mistakes, owning up to them and learning from them.

So after lending my camera to my daughter for a trip and getting it back in 3 days later with the lens assembly not working; I now have two issues to deal with: the learning opportunity and fixing the camera.

Google to the rescue after getting an E18 error code on my Canon SD300, which I love for its size and convenience. Greg Toews put together an excellent repair guide for this particular problem, which I found through a Wikipedia entry.

Now to get some sleep and ponder on how to approach the learning opportunity.