I Hate When I'm Wrong

I do. I really, really hate when I'm wrong. I don't like to be wrong. I'll argue if at all possible and have often convinced someone else that I'm right, even when I'm wrong. I'm really good at that. I'm also good at cleaning up after my mistakes so that you don't know that I erred. But this makes me crazy. No one is perfect, everyone makes mistakes. They say the best way to learn is from one's own mistakes. I have found that to be true - when I've royally screwed something up, I usually don't do it twice.

I was thinking about this in regards to children. How do you teach a child to make mistakes? It's like baseball - I went to my nephew's ball game a while back. He made a couple great plays and then his team lost. How would I support that he did a great job and then help him learn from his errors without focusing on them? I keep wanting to go back to how Jane Goodall raised her son using the chimpanzees as a model.

So, I made a big fat mistake today and the first thing I did was own up to it. And nearly had a panic attack. But I learned and now I've got help cleaning up the mess. And commiseration that my friend would have done the same thing. And an apology from the friend who (kind of) yelled at me. And I'm learning. I'm learning. I'm learning that I might need to keep talking myself down from the panic when I want to learn from my mistakes.