The Rookery

The Herons at the entrance to the ropes course.

As a teacher, I preach constantly about the need for failure as a part of the learning cycle. "If it's not hard, you're not learning." "When you mess up and fix it the learning sticks more than if you just get it right." "Your brain produces more robust connections when you fail and then figure something out."  Engineers expect failure.  Authors know that even their thirtieth draft won't be perfect.  Mathematicians can struggle with a problem for years.  Historians go down a lot of dead ends.

I know this.  I believe this.  And yet, up on the ropes course at Wolf Ridge, it was very hard to remember this.  My foot slipped and suddenly, for the first time ever, I had fallen off of the single wire.  No problem.  Intellectually, I knew just what to do.  Our naturalist, Claire, had demonstrated what to do; she had demonstrated it twice, in fact.  It was super easy.  No big deal.  Just put your feet on the wire, push out your legs, tuck your feet under you and stand up.

Nope.

She said I didn't need to use my arms…maybe she meant I needed to use them a little bit.  Legs out, feet under, stand up…

Nope.

The wire swayed so much each time I tried to stand. I didn't have the strength to get it to stand still.  I'll admit that I thought some words I won't type here.  I also berated myself for all of the trips to the gym that I had found good reasons not to do.  And then I thought for a bit.  Luckily, my ground partner was distracted by some scat and the rest of the class was busy way over at the entrance to the ropes course.  For the moment I was alone.

So I started my very ungainly way across the wire.  Push, pull, grunt, yank, flounder, rest…repeat.  Again and again and again and again and again.  Very eventually I made it to the next platform where I laid down on the cold wood and took a very deep breath, happy that I had not needed a dramatic mid air rescue.  Rationalizing that it was for the best that the Herons had missed the whole thing – after all, it might have freaked them out to see me unable to get up.

Ah, and there, I now realize, I was mistaken.  While I would have been (very) embarrassed by the Herons' encouragements, it would have been very good for them to see me struggle…a lot…and survive.  They would have seen that I can't do everything (yet…I've been doing a lot more squats since Wolf Ridge).  They would have seen me persist.  They would have seen that I, too, have a lot to learn.

We so rarely have the opportunity to fail in front of our kids.  They see us as finished products, able to do so many things seemingly without effort.  They don't see our fails.  They really don't see our epic fails.  All they see is ease (because we want to put them at ease).  But failure is just as important to model as kindness and tenacity and responsibility.  Normalizing failure (and survival and re-consideration and practice and re-trying) can be a huge gift.

So talk about your tries and your fails with your kids.  Share those stories often.  Show them how you manage things that are hard at first.

And be in awe of your children who fail every day.  As adults, we spend most of our time in our comfort zones professionally and personally.  Our kids have no such luxury.  They confront difficult new tasks multiple times every single day.  They expect things to be hard at first. They struggle a lot.  They're amazing.