Encouraging your kids

My wife Julie passes along this great story about our daughter Maddie, LEGOS and Pokemon. Although Julie is Maddie's primary homeschool teacher, I too have heard Maddie's "I can't do it" lament on many occasions. The Cleffa story is a wonderful lesson in how important it is to encourage your kids in whatever they do, to help them overcome their initial fear of failure and to ultimately succeed - and by "succeed" I don't necessarily mean to accomplish a specific task, which kids usually won't do on the first try. Instead, they can succeed simply by making the effort and, if they fail, understanding how important it is to try again. As I mentioned in the comments, I couldn't be prouder of my little girl - not just for succeeding, but for having the courage to try.

The background image on my laptop screen is Samuel Beckett's famous quotation, "Never mind. Try again. Fail again. Fail better." Maddie has asked me about this quote several times but I don't think I've been able to adequately explain it to her yet. With age I'm sure she'll understand and appreciate the imperative to not worry about failures, but instead to keep trying and get a little bit better each time.