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There's a good article over at Radical Parenting about making mistakes. We've been trained from an early age that mistakes are bad and should be avoided, but what if we shifted our perspective? Rather than beating ourselves up over mistakes, we can learn from them. And what better time to embrace mistakes and teach their potential value to our kids than when they're young and the consequences are small. Teaching kids to learn from their mistakes teaches self reliance and taking responsibility for one's actions - two invaluable yet sorely lacking skills in many adults these days.

By approaching mistakes with empathy and calmness, we can give our kids the opportunity to learn and move on from them rather than dwelling on them. Here are 3 strategies listed in the article to help kids learn from mistakes and move on in a positive direction.
1. Re-examine past mistakes and find the positive that resulted from them. This allows you to focus on the lessons you learned, rather than shame or guilt.
2. Foresee and plan for future mistakes - and how you will handle them. Sort of a worst case vs. best case scenario. For example, if you fail an exam, you can study more and ask for extra help.
3. To quote directly, ' Take the stigma out of mistakes.' We all make them and they can be excellent learning tools. Just make sure you DO learn from them!

What are the parenting mistakes that you have made? Post here!