Becoming a Dad has been the greatest joy of my life. Little things have become heartwarming as I watch my sons grow and learn. Yet, raising kids is not for the faint of heart. I feel pretty lucky that my years of teaching prepared me to help my sons learn and grow.

However, one of the hardest things I do as a father is let my son struggle.

Watching him, I know sometimes his choices will lead to disappointment and tears. But I have to force myself to sit back and let it happen. Which, as a parent, is not the easiest thing to do.

Magnetic Tiles

For his birthday, someone gave my son magnetic tiles. These are great sensory toys that provide so many positives to his life. They have quickly become one of our favorite toys. He loves to create and build using them.

I did all of the building when we started playing with Magnetic Tiles. After we took him through one that summer, my son became obsessed with car washes. He watched car wash cartoons on repeat. So, I built him a car wash out of these magnetic tiles.

He would ask me to build that car wash all the time. Then, he would put his trucks through the car wash. It was one of the cutest things—until the car wash would fall apart.

As he grew older, he started to build things on his own. I would first help him and show him how to build other things like car ramps, coin drop machines, or towers. Eventually, he took over most of the building.

But he was still learning those fine motor skills and physics. Whenever he built something, he would build too big or not control his hands and knock something over. Once the building broke, he would begin to cry and scream.

And I knew it would happen.

I know every time he plays with them, something is going to fall apart. It pains me to watch the process. He builds it up and then pushes too hard or doesn’t know where his hand is before it knocks something over. I understand he will get upset and smash everything he has worked for. But I know that he needs to go through this process.

Crying and Learning

As much as I hate his crying when the thing breaks, I know he is processing everything. I understand that he has to learn how things work, and if I jump in, he won’t learn it, or he’ll learn it when I’m not there to support him.

And it’s tough as a dad to let things like this happen.

I hope I can talk with him after he calms down and work with him on learning something from the process. I will try to calm him down and show him how to do what he did differently. I will explain that while it did break if he hadn’t smashed the entire thing, we could have fixed it.

I do this because I know I won’t always be there to stop him from making a mistake. He won’t always have the support right there. I want him to be a good human, and to do that, we often have to struggle and learn.

For now, I’m there to hug him when he’s angry and try to show him how he could have done things differently. I hope he will remember these moments when he is older and on his own and learn from whatever happened.

Failure Is Not a Bad Word

As a society, I think we fear the word failure. I know that I do. I have stopped doing things with friends because I might not be good at it.

But we learn more through failure than anything.

My youngest has started to climb and stand. He didn’t pop up on the first time and get solid legs. He has experimented with grabbing onto things that won’t move and pulling himself up. Often, he has his legs so wide, like a power stance, that I’m not sure he’ll ever be able to move. But he’s trying to figure out how to do these things.

And relax, I try to catch him if he falls. I don’t want my infant to hurt himself.

As a teacher, I saw so many people fear failure. They would give up if they didn’t know something or struggled with things. Why would you work on something I’m ignorant about and get a bad grade when I could give up and get the same result?

But failing and learning how to deal with it must be a life skill. Life shouldn’t always be easy. You shouldn’t not do something because you will be afraid to fail.

So, I hope my son learns it is okay to struggle. Failing comes with learning something new. I know the courses I struggled with in college are the ones I learned the most.

Failure Leads to Greatness

I’m not an expert in teaching or parenting by any means. But I know how to learn from my mistakes. I’m hoping that my son learns the same thing.

So, for now, I’m going to let the blocks fall. I’ll let the baby figure out how to stand and walk.

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