Help your child overcome the fear of making mistakes

“If you do big things, you make big mistakes, believes Walt Disney, pioneer of the American animation industry. Famous personalities all over the world have emphasised on the significance of mistakes and how they help us evolve. In fact, cognitive science suggests that errors are part of the fundamental machinery of learning. But most of us, especially students are afraid of making errors. Fear of mistakes is one of the greatest triggers behind exam stress or test phobia in kids. It can also make them less interactive in the classroom. So, as a parent or a teacher, you need to create a mistake-friendly ambience for children. Here are a few strategies that can make your child or student overcome the fear of making errors. 

Acknowledge that fear is real but can be controlled 
The first step towards making your child fear-free is to acknowledge his right to be afraid. Understand that his fear of making errors is deep-rooted. However, if you recognise his fear and carefully address it, your child will open up his heart and share his concerns with you. This is how you can replace fearful thoughts with constructive ones. Remember, when the fear-centre of the brain gets activated, the problem-solving center gets diminished.  

Work to enhance proximal development 
Make your child understand that not all questions have one correct answer. Encourage her to solve those problems that do not have a single right answer, but is open-ended. This will teach her to explore multiple possibilities. Solving MCQs often helps here. The logical reasoning questions often have more than one suitable answer, and students have to apply their rational senses to come up with the best option. Drawing on prior knowledge to solve challenging problems makes the brain proactive, resulting in a firm grasp on the subject, thereby ensuring a long-run success. 

Push kids towards the unknown 
Research shows that certain areas of the brain that get active when we come across new ideas or face creative challenges. This motivates us to take calculative risks, factoring in the possibility of errors too. Moreover, a probe into something new or unknown helps us accept uncertainty. So, introduce new concepts to your children and motivate them to explore and create projects out of those ideas. This will give create the scope for mistakes. This whole process will acclimatise kids to errors, opening their eyes to the brighter side of mistakes when they see something good emerging out of them. 

Don’t rectify your child’s mistakes too often
Promoting the idea that errors are commonplace and some are even good, will make your children overcome their fear, enabling them to identify their own mistakes and correct them independently. This is why experts often advise parents and teachers not to frequently rectify their children’s mistakes. Giving them the freedom to make errors and rectify them on their own is also an important life skill that needs to be inculcated. 

Encourage rough-draft thinking 
Teach your child the concept of rough-draft thinking when they share an idea. This means that their current ideas will not be considered as final, and they will have few more chances to refine their thoughts. This will give them the chance of asking questions, clearing doubts, and revising, in turn reducing their fear of failures. This also puts the child in a comfortable position, intellectually and emotionally.