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Why you should throw your kid in the deep end

Why you should throw your kid in the deep end

Ivy Xu
May 28, 2024

Source: Giphy

Think about a mistake you’ve made in the past.

How many times have you repeated it?

Probably not many — if any.

It’s been psychologically proven that we learn more from our errors than we do from explicit instruction.

And kids are no different.

The science behind it

In 2007, psychologists from the University of Exeter identified an “early warning signal” in the brain that helps us avoid repeating previous mistakes.

This nearly instant jolt of memory of the previous error is far more impactful to our behavior than simply executing on something we’ve been instructed to do.

This jolt is even more effective when we’re given the opportunity to assess our own errors, rather than having them pointed out to us.

A recent study on teaching for test preparation led by psychologist Janet Metcalfe revealed:

The teacher who got the best results employed a sort of Socratic method. “Okay, you guys got this wrong? Why would somebody get this wrong?” recalled Metcalfe. “And he did very little lecturing, almost none.”

This teacher asked his students to talk about how they had solved the problem and why they did it that way. He asked them to talk about what they found difficult. Students would often explain their thinking to each other. Finally, the teacher would ask his students to come up with ideas on how to recognize and avoid such mistakes in the future.

By contrast, the teacher who produced the lowest test score gains tended to lecture students on the correct way to solve the problems that they had gotten wrong. The focus was on the corrections, not the errors. His classes weren’t very interactive. His students’ test scores improved by only 6 percent instead of 12 percent.

So how can you do this at home?

Luckily, we’ve covered a ton of tactics on how to use mistakes and adversity as a launchpad for success.

Source: Giphy

It all boils down to three steps:

Making sure your kid isn’t afraid to make mistakes in the first place
Using those errors to grow and learn
Reflecting on the process to solidify the lessons

Here are some value-packed resources you can use as you navigate the topic of failure with your family. 👇

👍 Create an environment where mistakes are ok:

Establish unbreakable trust with your kid.
Get on the same page on what success means to them.
Embrace a growth mindset.
Take a stab at Ray Dalio’s 5-step process for getting the most out of your kid’s goals.

💦 Try, try, and try again:

Use science to help spur intrinsic motivation to learn.
Take a lesson from Elon Musk, and encourage your kid to learn by doing and embrace failure.
Keep them curious by keeping them confused.

👏 And finally…

Help them take feedback like a champ.
And don’t forget the value of training your kid to argue with themselves.

So go on — let your kid make mistakes.

They’ll learn from their errors regardless of whether or not you implement even a fraction of the advice in this article.

They’re savvy little learners if you let ‘em! 👊