If our kids don't fall, they don't learn to get up. I still remember the day in high school that my mom forgot to pick me up from school. I'm the oldest of four children, and no doubt she'd had a long day with the other kids and she forgot it. After waiting at school for an hour, I walked the three miles home, and when I got to my house, I shut our front door with anger, stormed into the kitchen and screamed in my mom's face that she'd forgotten me.
Later that night, my dad told me I no longer had a ride to school the next day. I thought my mom would still take me, but when the morning came, she refused. It was midterm, and as a top student ready to start college applications, being late wasn't proper. In my mind, missing these tests means the end of my academic career. I begged my mom. But she held her ground, and that day, I walked to school. And I missed my tests.
My mom didn't rescue(营救) me from failure. She let me suffer from it. She let me figure it out. She let me learn. Now, as a mom myself, I've realized that I want my kids to experience failure because failure is how we grow, learn and think outside of ourselves. It's how we self-educate to learn what's right and respectable, and what's not. It's how we become responsible and enthusiastic.
Falling down makes us better, because we learn how to get up.
