In this video, Dr. Jim Poole, MD, shares a story about a father who was upset with his child for making mistakes and explains how mistakes are actually valuable learning opportunities.

Transcript 

Welcome to Dr. Jim's FastBraiin. I'm Dr. Jim Poole, and I have definitely FastBraiin.

Today we're going to talk about mistakes and mistakes are not something to be worried about. I had a dad in and he was really getting on me with how many mistakes his child was making and he was getting really mad at his child. And I knew that this father had been a tremendous basketball player in high school and in college.

[00:00:28] And so I asked him point blank, "Did you ever miss mistakes on the basketball court?" He said, "Oh, did I?" I said, "Tell me about the worst mistake you made in a game." And he went on and on. And I said, "Did you learn from it?" He said, "Oh boy, did I Learn. From. It!" And he realized what was happening. He realized that he learned from his mistakes.

[00:00:47] So, those of us that are FastBraiin, yes, we make mistakes. And the mistake is us as a parent, not using it as a teaching tool. Not as a chastising tool but as a teaching tool. [00:01:00] Because it's through mistakes that we get better, and that we improve, and that we see how we did things that might not have worked, and we want to turn that into things that do work.

[00:01:10] So, good mistakes? Yes, they're all good. Bad mistakes? There's no such thing as a bad mistake. They're all good. It's what we do with the mistake is the important thing.