By: Lissa Peterson
On the way into preschool yesterday morning, I dropped my four-year-old daughter’s backpack on the ground. “Here you go, mommy,” she said, picking it up. “You messed up. You mess up a lot, don’t you?”
“I don’t know about a lot,” I responded, “but I certainly do mess up.”
I’ve been reading Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead, by Brené Brown. In this book, Brown suggests that we need to dare to be vulnerable, to risk emotional exposure and to “have the courage to be imperfect.” She suggests that parents need to let their children see them being vulnerable and making mistakes. As the comment from my daughter demonstrates, I’ve been making a concerted effort to be honest with my kids about my mistakes since reading Brown’s book.
Brené Brown has become fairly well-known for her TED talk on vulnerability. In that talk and in this new, best-selling book, Brown shows how we harm our ability to connect with others when we are not willing to be vulnerable. Brown’s research has proven that developing a comfort with vulnerability allows us to connect with other people in vastly more fulfilling ways.
Brown explores the concept of “shame resilience” – the ability to fail without thinking we are failures, to dare greatly without worrying of being unworthy of love and belonging. As parents, Brown says we must first work on believing that we are undeniably worthy of love – even in our failures – and then make a conscious effort to ensure that our children feel that way also. She feels we should concentrate not on discovering the right way of parenting, but on teaching our children to take chances and to handle failure with a positive attitude. The best way to do this, she says, is to be open and honest about our own struggles to do these same things.
The best parts of Daring Greatly are the stories that demonstrate the truth of Brown’s ideas more skillfully than the research ever could. Brown struggles with vulnerability, too. In fact, she originally started this research because she wanted to figure out a way to predict and control human behavior. However, the research proved to her that the best happiness in life comes not from prediction or control, but from “leaning into the discomfort.” In her books she shares many stories from her own personal journey as well as many she’s found during her research. These stories give the ideas she describes a sense of humor and humanity that make her book all the more enjoyable. In reading these stories, I felt the connection and empathy that Brown suggests we need in our day-to-day life.
On the whole, Daring Greatly is filled with a lot of good ideas and interesting food for thought. As you can see, I’ve already incorporated some of her advice into my own parenting tool box. I thought about my daughter’s comment for a while that day. I wondered if it is bad that my daughter thinks I mess up “a lot.” Ultimately, though, I decided it’s a good thing. At four, she is already uncomfortable with failure. I often can’t get her to try a new thing because she doesn’t want to do a bad job at it. I’ve been wondering for some time how to get her to be more willing to take risks. Maybe, just maybe, if she sees that it’s okay for mommy to “mess up,” she will be willing to risk failure herself. I’ll keep giving it a go and let you know what I find.
What do you think?
About Lissa:
Lissa Peterson is an Instructor at a local liberal arts college and the mother of preschool age boy/girl twins. She writes about motherhood, feminism, finding balance, and trying to take the time to savor the moment. Follow her on twitter @LissaPeterson
