NEEDED: Tales of Your Youthful Fails! (Or Your Kids’!)

A friend of mine was taught to celebrate failure – which while appearing odd at first, makes brilliant sense. What you celebrate is that you’ll have learnt more. It’s worked very well for her, and I’ve been using it with my own daughter, for instance when teaching her how to ride a bike without trainer wheels.
As so often the hurdle to trying is a fear of failing rather anything else, celebrating “failures” changes the game completely.

So this is about overall approach angle.

Last year my mother generously paid for my 13 year old son to attend band camp and he absolutely loved it! She agreed to pay for it again this year on one condition: he had to start writing thank you notes instead of forgetting as he often does. Well you can guess where this is going, he got a nice Christmas present from my mom and promptly forgot to write a thank you note, and I pointedly did not remind him.

So she told him she would not be paying for band camp so if he wanted to go he had to come up with the money himself. He panicked a bit “How can I come up with $300?!?” Then he got himself together and started making up fliers advertising his services. Every house within 4 blocks got a flier in their mailbox stating that he would babysit, pull weeds, walk dogs, mow lawns, etc.

The calls stared coming in and soon he had regular gigs. He took care of this house’s pets while they were out of town. He babysat for that house’s 2 little girls while the parents went out for a fancy dinner. He raked all the leaves up at this house. He trimmed the trees at that house.

It only took less than 2 months of occasional work to make the $300 and he is so proud of himself! He feels like a million bucks to know he can earn his own way. And it’s given him a taste for the joy of spending money. He is continuing the work, but now he takes the money and spends it on comics and pizzas and movies.

Dolly, my kids have the worst looking projects every time … but they also give the best oral presentations, because they know the material cold because they did the work. And the teachers know why that is.

My fail … goodness, there were so many. The time the “rung” to the treehouse in the woods broke under my feet and I kept climbing up, so had to figure out how to get down from the remaining step 4+ feet off the ground? (Answer: Jump towards the softest looking spot on the ground.) Or maybe failing to make the jump over the creek we had set up, and having to go back to Granny’s house (where one did not make messes) totally covered in red mud? (Lessons: ride faster if you want to land on the bank, not in the water. Also, do not show up on Granny’s porch covered in red mud.)

Or maybe, to tie back to Dolly’s post: in 9th grade I completely forgot about the Rock Collection for my Earth Science class until the morning it was due. I was in the habit of getting to school early to practice my horn, so I walked around the school campus picking up rocks that I labelled in 1st period study hall. I got an A despite the lack of a fancy box. Lesson there: it’s never too late to get to work and do things right.

I grew up in a house that was on the edge of a housing development – behind it was nothing but woods. My parents warned me that when I played in the woods, I should never leave sight of the house. If I could see the house, they reasoned, I could never get lost.

For several years, I followed that guideline religiously. Then one summer, I had a friend over. We must have been about ten. At age ten, the “in view of the house” rule was starting to feel stifling – even if we expanded it to mean we could be in view of the neighbors’ houses too. My friend wanted to go exploring, and that was good enough for me. In we went.

We took care to look for landmarks, like a boulder that resembled a gorilla’s head. But it didn’t prevent us from getting thoroughly lost. My friend turned to me to rescue us. I did my best. When we found the power lines, I knew the power lines intersected a main road directly west of my house, so I figured we were too far north. I carefully logicked out our location. Before you know it, we found Gorilla Head Rock again, and we got home just as my mother was starting to worry.

After that experience, I wandered into the woods more and more, and by the time my sister was old enough to accompany me, I knew my way around quite well. She never had the experience of getting lost, although once my brother and his friend decided to outdo me by getting lost-er, and they found themselves in a completely different neighborhood across town. They knocked on someone’s door and had my mother come get them.

When I was a senior in high school (1996), I had a falling out with the girls’ softball team coach. Well, I love the bat-n-ball sport, so I decided to try out for the boys’ baseball team. Insane. The town I’m from is a football and baseball town! Everything revolves around those sports, and for a GIRL to try out for the team? Unheard of.
Holey Moley!! It was tough; my hand hurt from catching, my legs from running and I had bruises all over me from the balls I didn’t catch or from sliding practice or numerous other things. I was regularly ridiculed by people, both kids AND adults! My own parents told me I was nuts! And of course the guys on the team weren’t exactly nice to me.
Well, I stuck it out until the end, despite all I was up against. Its hard to push back against all that negativity, but I made it.
I didn’t make the team. I wasn’t fast enough, I didn’t hit the ball far enough, I couldn’t throw the ball as far as the guys, etc. I even got labeled, ‘most likely to try out for the local minor league team and fail’ in my senior yearbook.
BUT!! I learned a little bit about what I was made of. Others were awed that I made it though to the end, without giving up.
That was a win for me, even though it was a fail.

I’ve thought of another event, not nearly so traumatic. :]

My oldest son loves climbing trees. He always has.

We lived in a house where there was a perfect climbing tree for him. He was about 4. I refused to pick him up and put him in the tree as he frequently requested. I refused to allow my wife or friends to help him out either.

I felt that if he *really* wanted to get into the tree he should climb up. Eventually he did. He stood at the top of that 5 foot tree shouting at the world the first time he got up. I was so proud of him.

Then he couldn’t figure out how to get down. I told him “You got up there, now get yourself down.” Oh, I was so cruel. Lunchtime came and he still hadn’t figured out how to get down. I ate my lunch on the porch, commenting on how good it was.

He finally gathered his courage and hung from the bottom branch and dropped the foot and a half to the ground. He stood there for a second in shock. He looked at me, the plate of food I had for him there on the porch.

He climbed back up into the tree and experimented with how high he could get before he was too scared to jump.

Watching him realize he could do this, and see the universe open up in his eyes … that made the guilt I felt at making him cry and suffer and tremble in fear all dissolve away.

To this day, in almost everything he does, he tries to figure things out for himself instead of asking for help right away. Of course, now I need to figure out how to get him to ask for help, but that’s another battle.

My daughter (age 5) wanted a shirt from the top rail of her closet. She can reach the hems of her shirts and usually she just tugs and it pops off the hanger. This time, it got caught on the hanger. She hollered for help and I (knowing we have at least 3 step stools) told er to figure it out. She was furious I wouldn’t do it for her. There was screming, crying, raging and the in a silent furry she stomped out to the kitchen, dragged a chair back to her room and got her shirt. She came back and informed me not to tell her I was proud she solved her problem. Because according to her, “You don’t need to be proud of people for just using their brains.”

I don’t know if it’s a “fail”. I kind of think it was an actual success in that I realized how strong the mind is. I managed to get talked into joining the National Guard to pay for college. I realized quickly that I had no clue what I actually signed up for. I cried a lot those first few weeks of Basic Training. Some where along the way, I stopped crying and figured out what I needed to do to get through it. I was never the best soldier, but I quickly learned that I was a lot stronger than I ever gave myself credit. Thank you, Uncle Sam!

I was hoping some of the others stories would jog my memory and one has — shoplifting.

It must have been at the beginning of middle school, my best friend at the time (and who, I’ll mention, just because it’s an interesting side-note, came from a very well off family), began shoplifting. She had all this cute Ziggy stuff in her room. Where’d she get it? Well, there’s a gift shop in town, and the five finger discount is so easy — she’d show me how. Game on.

We’d walk in the shop, usually split up, then just stand in front of the object of desire until such time as store proprietor was otherwise occupied, and into the pocket it’d go. We were at it at least once a week. Always at this same shop. Do you know, I felt PRIDE when I looked upon a purloined piece on my shelf? — Isn’t that Ziggy candle nice? I stole that. Me.

After about a month, a month and a half, of these lame-a** shenanigans (must have been SO obvious what we were up to), I was just slipping something cute into my pocket when I a voice behind me said “Either bring that up to the counter and pay for it, or put it back on the shelf please”. I put it back on the shelf, and left the store. I didn’t deserve that please. I was so ashamed of myself. I had been stealing! Stealing. It all become clear to me now. And I felt miserable. And the fact that the man was kind enough to “let me off” made me realize what I had been doing to a good person. I felt even worse. But would this depressing state of affairs even be the end of it? It was obvious that I could never go into his store again, but could I ever again walk into town as an honorable citizen? It was a horrible time. And to make matters worse – my friend who had started the whole thing didn’t even get caught!! Just me! Life was SO unfair.

That was me and my life of crime done! I drifted apart from that friend of mine. Then about maybe two years later, we were both at some kind of sporting event, and found ourselves in the dressing room alone. Although there were locked lockers, some articles of clothing had been left outside, like shoes. There was a particularly nice (and expensive looking) pair of shoes that had been left out. She tried them on. They fit. She says, as ho-hum as you like, “Should I steal them?”
“What??!! That’s crazy. And what would you tell your mother? Where would they have come from”?
“Oh, I’ll tell her I found them on the side of the road”. (A standby excuse I recognized from back in the candles-for-free days.)
I can’t recall what else was said, but I managed to convince her that the plan was ill conceived.

I was shaken up anew. I couldn’t believe she was still at it. In fact, no longer was the thieving limited to a “faceless” store, she felt entitled to have whatever took her fancy. Stealing someone else’s, what had to have been, prized and beloved personal shoes — and leaving someone to walk home shoe-less! — didn’t even seem to faze her.

Doing something bad like stealing, and then getting caught, the humiliation that followed, certainly helped me internalize what was right and what was wrong. Can’t remember how long it took to realize, but once I did, I always knew: I was the lucky one in the store that day, not my friend.

There’s no way round it — the hardest lessons are the keepers.

We grew up in a small community on the San Francisco Bay. And I mean RIGHT ON the bay. Our houses were on piers. There was a group of kids that ran around together getting into all sorts of trouble, and rarely involving our parents. We knew better than that! There was a large hill, more of a cliff really, that hugged the shore and towered over our houses. When a girlfriend and I were 10 years old or so, we built a fort on the hill (like nesting cormorants) and decided it needed some paint. Since my parents were building our house there were always plenty of supplies. We slipped away with a half-used gallon of blue paint and some brushes, and started up.
We got close to making it but about 50 vertical feet up something happened. The paint bucket slipped from my hands and started its gymnastic descent toward the bottom of the hill – and the parking lot. In my memory the whole thing happens in slow motion. The paint is hurling, rolling, flipping down the hill toward the cars, the lid pops off. It ends up, predictably, splashing paint all over one of the cars. We scrambled down the hill and did our best to wipe off the paint. But even with our best efforts some paint did not come off. We sat for a while and tried to figure out what to do. It wasn’t THAT noticeable? Was it? Even if it was, why would anyone suspect us?
Finally we came to the conclusion that we just needed to ‘fess up. It wasn’t fun. I rememeber crying all the way to the home of the car’s owner (a bachelor whom two young girls would probably not be allowed to visit nowadays.) But we did it, genuinely sobbing the whole time. The owner took pity on us, saying that we would be square if we washed and polished the car. We had never washed and polished like we did that day. It was an old rustbucket (now multicolored) but it shone like a diamond. The very kind neighbor said that he thought it had never looked better.
I look back on this incident and am so proud of our failure. Through it we learned that it’s always best to take responsibility. Just think of how ashamed I would be now if I hadn’t! And our faith in the kindness of our neighbors was reinforced when we were dealt with so compassionately. It was truly an opportunity to grow. I’m so grateful for it, and to my parents who gave us the space to make mistakes.

I’m dyslexic, and have a learning disability in math. I decided to try the advanced program in high school, in spite of my English teacher’s refusal to place me there. My mother protested this decision with the school.

I failed Algebra- miserably. I passed English with a B. Made an A in history.

I learned that within my strengths, I could challenge myself. I learned that where I was weak, I needed to push myself. I ended up retaking Algebra and passing the next year, but tanking Geometry.

I learned I loved psychology and how the human brain works. I took chemistry, even though I passed it by the grace of my science teacher who rewarded hard work and drive.

I picked a college based on the math requirements for the program I wanted. I graduated. Later on, I had to work very hard to get a good school on the GRE. I have a master’s degree in counseling. A PhD is something I can consider- because I learned to love learning and to work harder than everybody else to get what I wanted.

Even if I failed in getting the Advanced diploma in high school. Due to the Facebook era and graduating from a teeny, tiny high school, I know I’ve done much better educationally and professional than students who started out and took three years before dropping off the advanced diploma- and even better than those who were academically brighter than me.

I am trying to figure what I didn’t mess up as a child. It’s odd looking back at it now and how much leash my parents gave my sister and I. We used to ride around our neighborhood on our bikes. I would ride or walk to get my haircut starting in 5th grade. I even had to walk along a very busy highway to do it. I am surprised we didn’t get ourselves in more trouble.

I was trying to figure out which of my bicycling wrecks I should relate, the one where my friends and I made a ramp in our yard or the one where I was trying to go down hill as fast as possible? Or maybe I should tell the story of how I manage to have a firecracker explode in between my index finger and thumb? There’s also the time I jumped off a three foot stump in the back yard and managed to have my chin land on my knee forcing my front tooth to chip the adult tooth growing in and the blood…oh the blood. (at least that’s how I remember it.) It could also be me quiting soccer the year after I made the allstar travel team for the second year in a row. What about the time in elementry school where I was playing soccer with a bandaged foot after I just had my toe nail removed? I am surprised I survived at all, now that I think about it.

I’m glad all of these things happened to me. I now know to be more careful when building a ramp to jump my bike and landing should always include both hands on the handlebar. I also know that if you are trying to go as fast as possible on your brand new 10-speed that you should watch out for loose gravel. I also learned that when your friend throws a dud firecracker at you, you need to continue to watch the firecracker you are attempting to light. (Even as a kid I think we learn early on about plausible ignorance. “Where did you get those burns on your figures?” “Is that what they are?”) I also learned that if you quit an active sport and continue to eat the same way, you will become the fat kid. Only this takes 20 years to learn. And playing soccer with a bandaged foot, no matter how well bandaged, dirt is sneaky. Dirt can obviously make its way through a million layers of gauze wrapping that your “you’ll get a staff infection” worrying mother painstakingly put on to keep you sanitary.

Gee, I wish I were a kid again.

When I was in elementary school we had a field day every spring. The entire school was outside all day playing track and field and team games. I was a clumsy, uncoordinated child with no athletic talent (who grew into a clumsy, uncoordinated non-athletic adult) so you can imagine how well I did. Seven years I attended that school (kindergarten through 6th grade) and the only ribbon I ever won was a second place in the peanut hunt in kindergarten.

I admit, there was some disappointment every year when I failed to bring home the gold. But I learned to go play games for the fun of it instead of worrying about whether or not I won. And my mother (who also was a clumsy non-athlete) encouraged me to do things I was naturally good at like writing and science.

Because I wasn’t good at sports and couldn’t join the competitive teams I got to go to young writers workshops where I met real authors like Paul Fleishman and Steven Kellog. I got to go to science summer camps where I learned marine biology and took close up pictures of bugs with giant microscopes. And even though I never won a ribbon in anything other than peanut finding I still have very fond memories of field day.

Not an experience exactly, but I once heard a sermon titled “Failing at a High Level.” If you’re succeeding all the time, what you’re doing isn’t hard enough for you.

Tuppence, that teacher ought to be teacher of the millennium!

I can’t think of any stories at the moment. My mom protected me from failure a lot — she was reasonably Free Range in the physical sense, but in the social and academic senses not so much. So maybe that’s my story — I try to be careful not to be like that with my kids.

My daughter is only 10 months old, but I made the biggest “oops” so far when she was only a few months old. We took her to the zoo and pushed her around in her little stroller (the kind where the car seat attaches into the stroller). We had her unstrapped the whole time so we could pick her up and let her see the animals. Well when we got back to the car I went to put her in, and I’m only 5’1 so getting the carseat into the car requires me picking it up and literally almost flinging it into the base, then wriggling it around to get it to lock. I didn’t notice til DD started crying (delayed reaction) that as I was doing this she had tumbled out of the carseat and onto the actual seat of the car. She was fine, but I was horrified and convinced that I had failed some kind of mommy test. I’m not sure exactly what it taught me except to be more careful to make sure she is buckled in and just that nobody is perfect, not even a mom who would die for her kids can keep them safe from everything, and you have to be able to laugh at yourself.

My story is very similar to Tuppence’s and involves shoplifting. I was in 7th or 8th grade. There was a discount department store that was on the way home from school. My friends and I would stop in there on Fridays after school and buy a candy bar to eat while walking home. There was a security guard by the exit who would randomly look into people’s bags as they left the store. I guess that my friends and I must have looked innocent because the security guard never looked in our gym bags. Friday was the day we had to bring our gym uniforms home to be washed and we carried our clothing bags separately.

One Friday after school I was walking home with a friend. We made our usual stop at this store and decided to shoplift our candy bars. I don’t remember who came up with the idea (probably my friend because I was definitely a follower and not a leader), but the other one of us went along with it. We figured that it would be easy because the guard at the exit had never checked our bags before. We each picked out some candy and put it into our gym bags. So far, so good. As we got to the exit we thought we were home free. But the guard stopped us and asked what was in our bags. My friend and I answered, “Our gym uniforms.” He then asked us to open the bags and saw the candy. The guard asked us where we got the candy. I was too scared to answer, but my friend said, “At school.” (My junior sold candy during the early ’70s at lunch time.) The guard then asked where we went to school and to see a receipt. My friend told him where we went to school and that they don’t give receipts when you buy candy. The guard let us go and we ate our candy.

I felt guilty about getting away with stealing, even if it was a couple of 15 cent candy bars. I knew that there would probably not be a next time that the security guard would let me off so easily. I also felt bad for being a wimp and making my friend do all of the talking. But overall it was a good thing because that was the first and last time that I ever shoplifted.

I can remember several instances from childhood when we were planning a trip or outing of some kind, which got cancelled due to weather or unforeseen circumstances. Oh, the bitter disappointment! But I know it was instrumental in helping us face life’s disappointments to have to endure some of those times. I realize that moms and dads can plan outings on the sly, and only reveal the surprise when it is impossible for weather or circumstances to disappoint, but we kids had so much fun in the planning and anticipating. In the end I give my parents good credit for being the role model who enjoyed planning an outing, but had the grace to accept the disappointment when the plans didn’t always pan out.

Okay, this is off-topic (and man, I have to stop abusing italics, it’s hurting my eyes what I typed before!), but it’s also one of the cutest things I’ve read all day:

http://notalwaysright.com/making-a-huge-difference/11754

Our dog is 10, our kids 6 and 4. The kids love to weave in and out of our various doors into side, front and lake yards. The dog can not be trusted to return home, and I spent the first three weeks in our new house reminding the boys to shut the doors, shutting the doors behind them, and a handful of times hunting down the dog when she escaped.

Finally I figured 10 years was pretty good for a Saint Bernard and stopped participating in the boy/dog/door triangle. The four year old was the first to notice the dog trotting away. He called for her halfheartedly. Then went back to building his fort. After 20 minutes he and his brother decided they did want a dog and went on a hint for her. 45 minutes later the three of them returned. Soaking wet. And Triumphant.

Despite the success of their adventure I have noticed the two of them reminding each other about the doors, closing doors after themselves, and interrupting their play to run to the house to close the door.

No amount of “telling” about dog escape could provide as much impetus as “doing” a dog retrieval.

When I was about 12, I was riding my bike around my grandmother’s small little burg in Ohio while my mom and dad visited my aunt and uncle (same burg). I decided I was going to stop at Dairy Queen and get an ice cream cone, which for some reason I believed I could eat while riding my bike.
Well, of course you can’t do that and I ended up crashing my bike. It was a pretty bad crash. The bike fell on top of me, and as I pushing it back off, I realized the back tire’s screw was in my knee. Like, really IN there. I had about a block to go before I was back at my aunt and uncle’s house, so I pushed the bike, completely pissed off that blood was pouring down my leg and onto my brand new white sneakers.
I yelled for my mom once I got to the house and she promptly drove me to the emergency room where I received six stitches. She was scared because there was a lot of blood, but she didn’t feel the least bit guilty about letting me ride my bike unaccompanied. I, of course, did not tell her the real reason I fell because I knew she’d say something to the effect of, “Well, of course you were going to crash, you dummy!”
After my leg healed, I went back to riding around the neighborhood unaccompanied. I’ve suffered many falls since then (no emergency room visits required, thankfully), but I’ve learned to not steer a bike while attempting to eat an ice cream cone.

These shoplifting stories remind me of my own shoplifting tale.

At the age of 14 my dad had moved us across the country and disappeared. I was angry and frustrated and scared. Happy the abuse wasn’t happening anymore, but very worried he would reappear one day and it would all happen again. So, naturally, I acted out in a number of ways.

I had a vest that you could zip sleeves on, though I never did even in the dead of winter. I had carefully ripped the seam just on the inside back of the pocket so I could slip whatever I was stealing into and have it sitting in the back of my vest. I was fairly successful at this as long as I was careful not to choose noisy or bulky items.

One day I decided to try to rip-off a 7-11. Even then they were known to be extra vigilant. I was 14 and cocky and knew I could get away with it. I didn’t.

The hardest part for me to deal with when I got caught was how disappointed and sad everyone was; the clerk, the cops, the customers who were there at the time. That was even more humiliating than the handcuffs.

When I was processed and waiting for them to call my mom (and I was *not* looking forward to that conversation). Every cop seemed to make a point of walking past me and shaking their heads and making tsk sounds or commenting about what a shame it was.

Finally, the officer got off the phone with my mom and looked at me and said, “It looks like you’ll have to spend a night in the cell. She said to let you stew on it.” I was stunned. I numbly followed the officer to the cell. When the door slid and slammed shut it was the scariest sound I had ever heard.

A few hours later two cops dragged in this blond haired giant. To my 14 year old eyes he looked like he was 7′ tall. He had to turn sideways to get through the cell door. He sat on the bench across from the bed and stared at me.

Throughout the night, whenever I opened my eyes or looked in his direction he was staring at me. I have had some bad nights since then, in some of them much worse in their own way, but that night stands out in my memory above them all.

In the morning my mom picked me up and took me home and refused to discuss it. Her sadness and disappointment were worse than any argument or lecture she could have given me.

I have never stolen a single thing since.

Some time later, I’m not sure how long, I was at the grocery store across the street from the police station. A cop car drove up and parked on the curb and a cop got out to talk to someone. It was the man who sat in the cell with me all night.

I owe a large part of my not getting in some real serious trouble later on to my mom who had the strength to let me stew, the clerk and customers who treated me the way they did, and the cops who went out of their way to “scare straight” a troubled teenager. I never did find out that officer’s name, but I thank God for him and his willingness to spend 14 hours (probably unpaid and away from his family) to straighten up one young man.

I don’t have a shoplifting story. I was a good girl. I actually was made fun of by other girls because I would not shoplift Gap clothes like they did. Then they would make fun of my Kmart clothes. Sigh.

My parents were pretty good at letting us fail as a learning tool. e.g. I frequently burned and cut myself, but I know to to cut firewood and build a fire like a champ now. Here’s one example:

When I was an adolescent, several families took a camping vacation to Disney World. I had a limited budget to spend on junk. I blew through my money the first day. My parents gave me no additional cash for the rest of the week. All the other parents gave them a hard time about how cruel that was but they wouldn’t relent and wouldn’t let anyone else give me a “loan”…. Then years later, one of those parents told my parents that their own kids, now adults themselves, had no concept of how to deal with money, while I fully understand how to use it as a tool. They went on to say they always remembered how very mean my parents had been on that trip, and in retrospect, how very wise that was.

Incidentally, Lenore… is “tails” for “tales” a typo, or is it supposed to be that way?

(And no comments, guys. I try to hold it in, and I try, and I *try* but sometimes it’s like an itch and I have to say it. I blame my mother. I really, truly, blame my mother. Do you know I only learned how to type so my mother would stop “fixing” what I needed typed up for school?)

My two girls begged me to do swimming lessons at the start of the year. We live in Australia and enjoy going to the pool and beach so it is a sensible idea. My oldest had done lessons before and was ready to move up to the next level, where they actually start to do correct strokes etc. She is an intelligent kid and most things she does come easily to her.
By the end of the first lesson though, she had realised that this was harder and she couldn’t just do it straight away. She was in tears. She announced she wasn’t doing it any more. This was the first time that she had “failed” at something.
I gently explained that I had payed alot of money to do the lessons and that she would be able to stop at the end of the term.
We talked about what she could do to improve and how she could talk to her instructor.
The following 4 weeks she continued to do badly and cry at the end of the lesson because she was “failing”.
It broke my heart to see her struggling so much but I knew that it was important for her to develop perseverence and to understand that it’s important to follow through on commitments
It took 8 weeks before she started to get the hang of things. The last 2 weeks before the end of term she finally got the hang of things.
Now she is a lot more confident in her swimming. It would have been easy to let her give up after her initial failure but she is pleased I made her keep going.

Lyndsay: That reminds me of my friend’s littlest girl. She is 2 and so so tiny and she is fearless. It is the cutest thing to watch her climbing up big things with the big kids. I do have to say though it may be more her personality that how you raised her. The reason I say this is this little girl has twin sibilings a bit older than her and they are not nearly as brave as she is. One is actually very timid and gets nervous easily. So you know, nature and nuture both play a part.

I’d like to extend the conversation to teens. When my 2 were teens they had to get up for school with alarm clocks alone: you ignore it, you pay the consequences. they chose when and where to do their homework (listening to music was always involved..which I couldn’t do as a teen). Unfinished homework: school gives consequences, not mom. they decided how late to stay out and quickly learned how to manage their sleep, play, and homework priorities…I ask you to consider what happens to the sheltered child who is always told what to do at home when they suddenly find themselves on their own at college. Many of my kids’ friends went wild with their new freedom and failed out. I am proud to say that my now 2 adults have great careers after higher education and they are delightful parents themselves who are of course raising curiosity filled and quite capable kindergartners

The one and only time a girlfriend and I hitch-hiked home after dark (yes, the streetlights had long ago come on), dressed admittedly provocatively, we got picked up — wait for it — by a CITY BUS.

The driver didn’t charge us. He didn’t want to see us get picked up by someone “disrespectful” (his word). This was, oh, 1979.

The bus was full. It was so embarrassing neither of us ever tried to thumb a ride again.

When I was between 5th and 6th grade we made the determination to move me to a private school. We were told that, due to the rigorous academics, they recommended that entering students be held back a grade or they may fail. My parents asks and I said no, I wanted to go in as 6th grade. The 1st quarter I got a C and the rest B’s, my worst report card ever and i’d worked hard to get them. Well, I knuckled down and next report card was back to all A’s (and remained that way excepting a B in physics junior year in high school). I know it’s not ‘failure’ in the traditional sense, but my parents trusted me to exceed even after a set back, on my own, there was no tutors or frantic calls to the school or calls for extra study or help. They trusted me to do my best and, after the brief stumble, I worked my way back to the head of the class and stayed there.

I was pretty careful as a kid. Due to my skin condition, accidents were extra painful and took months to heal.

My sister
Knocked out a tooth running into a mailbox
Broke her arm after her best friend accidentally pushed her out of a tree.

The biggest was the time she fell off the high dive over the concrete. The safety rail stopped just before the concrete ended. She was distracted for a second and stepped wrong. She fell off, but managed to grab the frame and stop her fall.

The 1st lifeguard blew her whistle and yelled at sis to stop fooling around. The head lifeguard, William, came running out of the club house. William stopped a couple of the Dads from climbing up to pull her up.

Had they climbed up, their weight on the board would have crushed her arms and hands. I’ll never forget William standing under her telling her were to put her feet so she could stand on the frame and pull herself up. Mom arrived in the middle of this.

Once SIs was back on top of the board, William climbed up and checked her out. Since she was unhurt, Mom and William made her jump off the board like 10 times.

Mom regretted not making her get back on the horse the time she was thrown, but the teacher was afraid sis’s collar bone might be broken – and sis had a history of going almost a week with broken bones untreated because of a high pain tolerance.

Same pool – I dove off the low dive and was swimming to the toddler steps on the other end of the pool under water. The same lifeguard, who had yelled at sis for falling off the high dive, accidentally dumped an entire bucket of chlorine in the pool.

They blew the whistle to evacuate the pool, but I couldn’t hear them underwater. The guards on duty just stood there whistling and yelling. So sis jumped in and pulled me up yelling at me to get out. William came running from the club house. When we got to the edge – he hauled us out and carried both of us to the locker room.

He kicked the swinging locker room door open, yelled emergency male lifeguard in locker room. He tossed both of us in the shower and turned it on full blast, washing our eyes out first. First me then sis because she had pulled her goggles on, when she jumped in.

He had one of the other girls go get our bags and left so we could change. While we were changing he called mom to see if I needed to go to the ER. Actually my skin cleared up for several weeks after this.

He was finally allowed to fire both lifeguards who had been on duty but not doing their jobs. He was furious that a 6 yo had enough courage to jump in to get me out – and two adults were trying to blame me for not responding to the whistle.

Part of his argument was they were blaming sis and I for the accidents and according to him we were two of the best behaved kids at the pool

The whole swimming the length of the pool underwater was known to the staff. William made the point of introducing me to new lifeguards because more than once a good guard had jumped in looking for me in the deep end not realizing I had surfaced in the shallow end..

My Epic Fail:

In high school, I failed calculus my senior year. It was mainly due to the fact that I fell behind early and just gave up when it got too hard to catch up. My parents knew I was failing because progress reports told them so. My mom negotiated extra help sessions after school for me, but I stopped going after a while. So my parents let me take the F I’d earned and I wasn’t allowed to graduate with my class. Because I had been primarily an honor student except for that one class, I was allowed to attend the ceremony and walk the stage, but my diploma folder would be empty. I didn’t want to go, but my parents made me, and it was deeply humiliating to have to stad there knowing I had blown it. What’s more, I had to make up the course at summer school and I had to pay for it myself. My parents said they had paid four years of Catholic school tuition, and didn’t feel obligated to pay for any more. I hadto find a course that would fulfill my requirement, enroll myself, and get myself to and from the class. And it couldn’t interfere with my summer job. So, I worked during the day, went to my class at a local community college at night, and got myself home on the train every night since I didn’t have a car. It was a tough summer, but it was my first taste of real adult consequnces for screwing up. I got an A in the class, and when I got my high school diploma in the mail in August, my parents threw me a huge graduation party. My dad told me later that he was proud of me, because I had screwed up, but I worked hard to make it up.

Nowadays, kids’ parents would be complaining to the principal and school board so their kids will pass. My parents just let me fail and reap what I sowed. I took a page from them, and sometimes make my daughter go to school and face the teacher if she doesn’t finish her homework, because I want her to learn that she’s responsible for her own success or failure.

I left my english homework in my homeroom teacher’s class in a backpack hanging on my hook. After realizing my error post-bell, I asked my english teacher if I could just go run back and get it. To my shock she said, “I’m sorry, no, you will receive a zero.”

I was a star student, the teachers’ pet, how could she not allow me to go retrieve my homework I left in the adjacent room. I cried.

When I returned to homeroom, I told my teacher of my tragedy and how unfair it was. My teacher listened to my rattled story of abuse and after I finished she leaned down close to me. She said with full eye-contact, “I’m so sorry, but next time don’t forget your homework.”

My mind spun. How could my homeroom teacher, the one I loved, the one who I brought pictures to, the one I looked up to, not right this injustice. Clearly the school was out to get me and I was going to tell my mother all about it. Giving their star student a zero for a simple mistake, ridiculous.

When my mother finally got home I told her the tale complete with wild hand motions. Now, had this been 2011, my mother would have swiftly got on the phone at my command and demanded a parent/teacher/principal conference at this insanity. My ego was hurt and needed a hug. How could leaving my homework in my backpack be MY fault.

Unfortunately for 10 year old me, this was 1989. My mother listened to my story with intent and after I finished she reiterated the word’s of my homeroom teacher. “Well, I bet you’ll never do that again. Let’s hope you can make up that zero with straight 100s for the rest of the year,” she uttered as she stood up from the dining room table.

My mouth was on the floor. No one wanted to hear my sob story, no one wanted to scream ‘this is totally unfair!’, no one was concerned that I might not get into college because of this one zero.

Defeated I went to my bedroom and sat on my bed. After sulking a good while, I grabbed an extra folder I had on my shelf. With a big marker I labelled it “Homework”.

I decided the best thing for me to do was to put ALL my homework, regardless of the class into this one folder and I would carry it around with me at all times. This way, I would never accidentally leave it in my backpack or my cubby and I would make sure I had it before leaving the house each morning. Who knew a 10 year old could come up with a solution to their own problem.

I used to roam the woods a lot as a teenager. I don’t think my mom knew I was out there, or if she did, how far I ranged. (I am sure I never disclosed how far I was actually going. Probably told her I was walking in town.)

Anyway, I learned those woods by slowly expanding my territory. There were deer trails but no signage. I never saw another human out there. I had no compass or maps or supplies or walkie-talkies.

And once I got really lost.

I had gotten too far out of my comfort zone and didn’t know how to get back to town. I panicked for a few seconds, then sat down…. and listened.

In the distance, I could just make out the sound of occasional car traffic. So I hiked toward the sound of the traffic and stumbled out onto a familiar country highway, the one that led straight back to my house. Whew!

Lesson I learned there: sometimes when you don’t know what to do, just stand still and listen for a minute.

As a kid, I was told I could do anything. I went to college expecting to study hard, get grades and graduate. What I found at the big campus was curve grading, the inability to ask for help and poor grades. After my first F, I could not decide on a major and dropped out at almost 80 hours completed.

I got married and started my family. This was the best choice for me. I do not have the skills to maintain family and career….I cannot do it all.

Now my family is older, I know what the best career for me is and I have returned to college. At age 40, I ask for help and rely on others. I have successfully completed with straight A’s. All that young teen needed was to fail and move on.

I suppose one example, not very freerange, but about apparently failing, is from when I entered one of the many singing competitions I went for as a kid. I must have been 12 or 13; there weren’t too many entrants in this particular class, but I lost it a bit near the start of one song, and had to start again.

But I still won the prize.

Ever since, I’ve always remembered this if I’m worried about ‘stumbling’ in some way, either on stage or in something like a job interview. You *can* recover from these things, in fact you can really make an impression if you make a confident and gracious recovery. Indeed, I’ve seen great musicians do this at concerts, and they just take it in their stride – it never lessens anyone’s respect for them.

Scraped, bloodied, falling off trees, crashing after makeshift jump for bikes, getting beatnup by my older brothers.burning my fingers on fireworks, getting chased by angry hornets after throwing rocks at the nest,stitches,stitches and. More stitches, angering motorist and getting chased through the wood after throwing a snowball at moving vehicles, sneaking into rail yards, sneaking into houses under constuction,stealing stuff, smoking pot, hitchhiking across the USA, challenging authority, stealing pumpkins fro the field and getting hell for it, swimming in swamps in the middle of the night, my first sexual experience, totaling my parents car multiple times, getting chased by the cops, piercing thumb to become blood brothers, hanging out in then woods to drink beer, fighting. BECOMING A MAN.
Juryriggin stuff, playing with fire, teasing girls, sneaking out at night, lying to get out trouble, looking at dirty magazines, breaking into houses, shooting stuff with pellet guns, throwing eggs at cars, kissing girls, fishing, thumbing all over Europe, sleeping under a bridge, getting soaked in the rain, shitting in the woods, outwitting the teachers, outwitting my parents, growing wise, older but not too soon.

I wanted to tell you about a series of books I just read and thought you might love, related to this topic.
Elizabeth Enright’s The Saturdays (Melendy Quartet) is the first book in the series. The four children spend a Saturday each out and about in London alone and their associated adventures. The youngest is not supposed to go alone and thus his adventure is full of mistakes that teach. Great books for young people. Must read for even parents, great lessons for free range.

I lived in the Canadian arctic as a child, and you couldn’t ask for a more free-range existence. In the arctic in the 80’s, phone service was sketchy and expensive.

One night after supper, I was out playing. I’d been gone for a while, and my mom was talking to her sister (in southern Canada) on the phone. All of a sudden there was a loud knock at the door. My mom went to check who it was, and it was some of my friends.

“Karen’s stuck in a snowbank across town,” they said. “She wants you to bring the snowmobile and come get her.”

My mom looked at them incredulously. “I’m on the phone,” she told them, “LONG-DISTANCE! Tell her to get herself out.”

I was 4. And apparently I was a bit miffed that I did not get a handy ride home. But with the help of the other kids (in our community pretty much all the kids hung out together) I did manage to dig myself out of the snowbank, and I did manage to walk home, in time for my mom to tell her sister, “Oh here she is. She’s just turned up.”

When I was young my parents enrolled me in piano lessons. It was expected. I was lousy – I would never practice, except for a half an hour the day of the lesson.

One day the teacher, who lived across the street, gave me “in the hall of the Mountain king” to work on, figuring it would keep me busy for at least the next 6 to 8 weeks. I loved the piece and practiced all week, and came back the next week having learned it. My teacher was flabbergasted.

So I learned that I could learn music if I thought it worthwhile.

Of course, I didn’t go back and become a piano virtuoso – I was still lousy, but I learned two things: that most teenage boys don’t necessarily get much help with 1. Classical Music can be very fun, and 2. if you never practice, at least you get better at Sight Reading.

Paul

I thought I was ready for having babies. You know, emotionally ready. Really ready. I wasn’t 16, I was twice that age. And sex didn’t work, so we adopted a child. Let me tell you, adopting a child is not something that you do on impulse one night in the back of a car because you’re drunk and it feels good. It’s like getting a master’s degree while undergoing Freudian analysis. And it’s just as expensive, too.

Anyway, so the baby comes. (Well, actually, we go and get him.) And nothing, let me tell you NOTHING could have prepared me, really, for what was to come. Was I emotionally ready for caring for that six-month-old infant? Hell no! I had all the stuff, I had read all the books, but when it came down to it, I was a mess, and he paid the price.

He’s ten, so he’s survived me pretty well so far, and I have more kids now. I did a little better with those, i think, because there is NO SUBSTITUTE FOR EXPERIENCE.

Let me say that again: there just isn’t a substitute for experience. So even if you think you are ready, even if you have read all the books, even if you have talked to your friends, researched things on the internet, watched through a keyhole and thought you were an expert, you don’t know sh•t until you’ve done it yourself.

That’s the real piss-off of the human experience. I wanted to skip over that messy principle of learning through experience, I wanted to skip a lot of “stupid” things I saw my buddies doing when I was in high school and college. I wasn’t attracted to losing consciousness or vomiting or having flu-like symptoms, so I just “skipped over” drinking excessive amounts of alcohol or doing drugs. In fact, I hardly ever drank at all. I guess because I didn’t want it, I didn’t have to go there. With sex, though, well, that was different!

I thought I knew everything about marriage because I’d watched everyone else’s “mistakes,” and oh boy, I was going to get that one right for sure. Well, my marriage lasted 13 years and then it was done. I guess I didn’t really know how to pick a partner when I was 22. But I didn’t do anything that legions of other human beings haven’t done, which is to make your best guess and LIVE.

Okay, calm down, I know there are serious consequences to things like drunk driving and doing hard drugs, and the laws are designed to save us from ourselves. Wear a helmet when you ride a motorcycle, the law says. Buckle your seat belt. You’re going to cost society too much if you end up with a head injury or killing someone. Laws against teen sex are attempting the same thing: to save us from ourselves, to save society from the fallout and grief of kids having kids of their own to raise.

What some have failed to mention about the human evolutionary programming stuff, though, is the context in which human society and biology evolved. In a tribe, if a 14-or-15-year-old bears an infant, she’s not on her own raising it. I’m not saying that the daddy hung around. In fact, the male is a minor player; he’s out hunting for meat, and the ladies are huddled together, babies strapped on backs, lots of support and community, interdependence and shared experience.

Does it seem so utterly bizarre that a cat gets pregnant and has kittens when it becomes sexually mature? Not really. Do we exclaim about how wrong it is, imagine that it would have been better if the cat had waited to have sex until it was prepared for the consequences? For heaven’s sake, we humans used to procreate when we reached sexual maturity too—because we could, because it was easier on our bodies, and because we had a pretty great support system in which to raise up those new humans.

Our current society, while perhaps more “civilized,” seems utterly counter-indicated by our biology and basic human needs. Even though I waited until I was 32 and married to start “having” kids, the isolation of the middle-class, North American way of life, raising kids in the 21st century, nearly killed me. What about community, interdependence, support, empathy, shared reality, connection? Nah, you’re supposed to make it all happen by yourself in your 3-bed, 2-bath rancher, with your husband. Bah.

My guess is that within the next decade or two, we’ll look back at the histrionics of this period and shake our heads about what got us all fussed, because we’re going to have some REAL problems on our hands.

When I was in 3rd Grade, I had really not wanted to go to school on a Thursday. So I pretended I was sick. I thought it was totally worth it, until the next day. My friend, J.C, was telling me I missed out on a WHOLE lot of fun stuff. And if youre thinking “Fun” is some Nuculear Physicist coming in and talking to us about “atoms” or something, your wrong. That day was a free day, and that they called the fire department to wet us with the hose so we could have a water day. And later, they had popsicles, and a bunch too! And then they would watch a boatload of movies! In hearing this, my mouth basically unscrewed off its hinges and dropped! I was so embarrased that i was the only one (and I mean it!) miss it because i faked being sick!

I don’t know how to contact you, Lenore, so I am going to ask you my question here: What did you think about the story of the mother from Scarsdale who dropped her two young daughters off in White Plains after warning them to stop arguing in the car? She was trying to teach them a lesson and was arrested for doing it (“child endangerment”, I think). Did you blog about it? I have just discovered your blog–and recently read your book–so I am not up-to-date on your past blogs. I’d sure like to know what you thought about that whole thing!
Thanks!