Mistakes

Everyone makes them right?
Thins spill, get broken, get messed up, it happens its life.

When I make a mistake I am gripped with fear an anxiety. When I was a kid, and I would make a mistake my parents would be mad at me- like I was not supposed to make them. Which led me to try and hide any mistake I would make and appear perfect. This failed. For a long time I honestly believed that no one else was as clumsy or scatterbrained or stupid as I was.

When my friend told me about doing something as a child and then going to tell her parents about it voluntarily I was floored, "wouldn't they be mad?" I asked. They weren't they expected help cleaning it up, but did not degrade or chastise her for it.

I however would live in fear of my parents finding out, I did not want them to be mad or disappointed.

So now I am a mother myself and when things get spilled (as happens all the time) I do not want them to be afraid or feel like less of a person. I want them to learn from the mistake and then help clean it up or fix it. But I still struggle with my knee jerk reaction to get crabby about it and to yell at my kids about it, and I have had to apologize more than once for my poor reaction

To point, yesterday, Princess spilled a large smoothie in my room it splattered everywhere. Initially, I started to yell. Then I took a deep breath and asked her what happened, she told me, and we cleaned it up together, no harm no foul.

I hope that my kids will not inherit the fear of mistakes that I have. I hope they will have the self confidence to know that mistakes happen and that I will always love them no matter what.