Kerry here! 👋
Parenting through mistakes isn’t easy.
Two frogs were hopping down a road when one fell into a hole. “Help!” he cried.
The friend responded with, “You can do it! I believe in you,” and then he hopped off to find a ladder. By the time he returned, the frog was already out.
“How did you get out?” the friend asked.
The frog replied, “I had to – a truck was coming.”
When it comes to parenting, how often do we rush to bring our kids the ladder instead of letting them figure out how to climb out a hole they dug for themselves? When we rescue too quickly, they may learn not to trust their own ability to problem-solve.
There’s a new parenting model floating around that makes me laugh every time I hear it. Please pardon the language because nothing else quite captures it.
It stands for “F___ Around and Find Out.” 😳🤣 Many teens are going to FAFO whether that’s our parenting model or not. For example, there was no stopping Palmer from finding out what happens when you throw fireworks out the window of a moving car (think spitting in the wind, but with explosives). And there was no avoiding coming home to 15 year old Palmer surrounded by fire fighters and cops after he and a friend rounded up a towel, a lighter, and gasoline to see what happens when you put all three together. (Don’t even get me started… I have so many stories of teenage boys FAFO’ing the hard way!!)
There’s just no preventing some young people from FAFO’ing unless we keep them tethered to us 24/7. Thanks, but no thanks.
What we CAN control is what they Find Out about us when they FAFO.
We have choices about what we teach our FAFOers. (So many fun ways to use this acronym! 😆)
You get to decide which response teaches your kids that you are a loving resource during hard times:
- You can be mad and layer punishments on top of what they’ve already learned the hard way (see examples above and imagine whether any of the natural consequences weren’t already uncomfortable enough). This teaches them that it’s a drag if we find out about their mistakes.
- You can yammer on with a lecture, trying to talk sense into them – as if lots of words from a parent is how teens learn. This teaches them that we are annoyed and critical when they mess up.
- You can be present, warm, and empathetic, trusting that they are clever enough to learn when they take a face full of fireworks or have to go to fire-safety classes. Yes, we should be there and administer first aid to the fireworks-face. Yes, we should drive our kid to fire-safety class without lecturing. And yes, it’s ok to charge a chore for your drive-time.
Just like the frog, our kids don’t always need us to jump in with a ladder; they often just need encouragement, space, and the belief that it’s okay to figure things out for themselves.
There’s no escaping it – kids are going to FAFO. You did it, I did it, and TBH, we still are figuring it out, given that life is a never-ending series of experiments. Parenting through mistakes takes patience, courage, and trust. When we step back and let our kids learn, we give them confidence and the tools they’ll use for life.
Our kids don’t need us to keep them out of every hole; they need us to be the steady, safe presence who believes they can climb out and who loves them even when they FAFO.
