Watching a Parent Make a Mistake and Recover: Modeling Resilience for Children
Last Wednesday, I was cooking dinner while helping my 7-year-old with homework. In my multitasking frenzy, I added salt instead of sugar to the pancake batter I was making for dessert. The pancakes were inedible, and I had to start over. My daughter watched as I sighed, acknowledged my mistake, and calmly began making a new batch. “It’s okay, Mom. Mistakes happen,” she said, echoing words I’d used countless times. In that moment, I realized we had a perfect opportunity to model mistake recovery in a low-stakes environment. ...