Parenting Lessons (Jan 25): Failure and Self-Care
This is part of a monthly series where I share parenting lessons I learned each month.
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Failure
I have wanted my older daughter, Grace, to take responsibility for her schoolwork. For starters, it’s her taking the initiative to study her Chinese spelling (“tingxie”) without me nagging at her. So I’ve always wanted to do this: not ask her to study for tingxie and let her fail it as a natural consequence so that she would learn.
However, it’s proving harder for me than her to let go. I couldn’t let her fail when I knew she could do well if she studied. So I kept nagging. But in January 2025, failure came by without me being intentional. Because of the changes in the classroom and her falling sick, she misplaced her tingxie sheet and forgot to ask for another one. So she didn’t know when the tingxie was and didn’t study for it. She did really badly.
Ironically, she was more chill than me. I reminded myself not to be more anxious than my child! I know the best time to let the children fail is when the consequences are small, such as P1 or P2 tingxie. This way, they can learn the consequences of not doing their work and manage failure. In a way, this situation also forced me to learn how to accept failures with my daughter.
I have to reframe my thinking to see how a failed tingxie wouldn’t be a disaster in the grand scheme of things. Embracing failure and learning from it is a much more valuable life lesson than getting full marks for tingxie. I had to undo my intolerance for failure so my child could also model how to learn from and pick herself up after the failures which are inevitable in life.
Self Care
I usually have a quick shower, tuck my children into bed and sit with them until they fall asleep. So it’s always a rush for me. So I decided to do a self-care bath routine once a week. My hubs will take over while I take my time in the shower. I would tell the girls, “Go to sleep first. I am going to do my self-care.”
One day, I saw Grace standing under the shower and enjoying it. I asked her what she was doing and why she wasn’t putting on the soap. I am doing self-care, she replied. Children pick up things, even on how we take care of ourselves. And I realised she would learn how to care for herself by seeing how I care for myself. It’s the lifestyle we pass on, whether it is healthy eating, ways we manage our stress, or knowing when to rest.
That’s about it, thanks for journeying with me on this parenting journey. Before you go, you might want to check out my other posts on parenting. Leave your parenting tips, comments or questions below. Love to hear from you. 🙂
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