You Cry, You Learn. You Lose, You Learn.

Sang it, Alanis.

How do we teach our children it is okay to fail? To deal with failure?

...By letting them fail, y'all.  They cannot WILL NOT learn how to win, without failing.  I mean, this is new for me as well because... I never fail. Just kidding. I can barely walk in a straight line properly. I fail constantly. But, this isn't about me. It is about these participation trophy snowflakes that we are raising.

Ugh. Ew, I don't talk like that. gross.

But really, Mae (my five-year-old) was sitting in her room with Jude (the three-year-old) playing a game that they had made up because their demon mother demanded that the T.V. be shut off because, "So help me God if I hear the theme song to PJ Masks ONE MORE TIME".  So, imagination it was.  Well, in this game one of them had to guess what the other one was thinking (because my kids have limited creativity the answer was ALWAYS Twizzlers. Good Lord).

You had three chances to correctly guess word (again, it was Twizzlers, EVERY SINGLE TIME) and if you could not guess correctly you lost.  When you lost (which Julian did... every round), Maeli would take a flashcard from your hand (the cards had no pertinence to the game other than some sort of point scoring).

As I watched through the crack in the door, Jude started to cry while Mae removed another card from his deck.

"It's not FAIR, Sissy! Dat MY card"

"Jude," Mae said in the sing song voice she uses to emulate her Kindergarten teacher, "This is how the game is played, you need to learn to think about your guesses."

First of all- yes, I am fully aware that she is a better mother than I am.  It is why I am totally okay with having more kids, I have Mae to raise them.

Anyway, I sat there and thought about it and she is right. Losing is how we learn to adapt our thinking. I know this isn't a new idea, but it is one that kids take for granted and it is up to us to show them the importance of losing.

We can hold our kids, tell them we are sorry, and let them cry with disappointment.  That is OKAY. They are kids, they are allowed to be hurt. But, we need to remember that with each loss is an opportunity.  They won't make every team, they won't get every field goal, they won't get 100% on every test.

What we can't do is make excuses.  I know how easy it is to want to protect your kids but when loss occurs, it isn't the coach, teacher, or weather's fault. It isn't even always our kids' faults.  It is just  LOSS. Take it, and learn from it.  Don't let it detract from your life. It isn't worth it.

Cue the "Growing Pains" theme song for this after school special blog post.