Lessons Learned

Isn't it amazing as parents, how much time we put into trying to teach our kids the lessons of life so they themselves do not have to experience the negative but can learn from our mistakes. I challenge you, that for the next week, to log on paper each time you attempt to "direct" your child/grandchild away from something that might hurt them or be bad for them. It will probably amaze you.

If your kids are like mine (and me) most of the time your warnings have fallen on deaf ears. I have never seen a kid, after being told not to do something dangerous, harmful or not wise, turn to their parent and say, "Wow! Thanks mom and dad. You know you're right. I was about to be SO stupid. I will learn from your mistakes and I will never attempt to do that again." Only on Leave It To Beaver, maybe.

We as adults like to look at children and be the teachers and think we are experts on the matter of lessons learned. The truth is that some of us have learned from a lot of them. Some of us are better learners than others and others seem to have to stay after school on the matter. But lest any of us think we've arrived, we probably need to think again.

It dawned on me the other day that there has never been a lesson I have learned that meant anything unless it cost me something. Think about it. If the experience didn't cause me to lose or make me give something in return, it probably wasn't learned and I am probably doomed to repeat it.

I remember as a child, my parents told me to not to poke anything into the electrical outlet on the wall. They told me that Reddy Killowat lived in there and he would bite me hard and make me cry. I heard what they were saying, but I didn't listen. It wasn't until the day that as a 4 year old, I rammed a metal bobby pin right into old Reddy's lair - THEN I learned the lesson that my parents had been trying to keep me from having to experience. The lesson stuck. Here I am at 49 years old, remembering in "shocking" detail every jolt of electricity that hit my hand - and I will NEVER put anything else into an outlet, except what belongs there. Lesson learned!

As adults, think back on every financial deal that went bad, tempers lost and things said, overreactions, the results of procrastination, shortcuts taken that weren't really that short, mishandled relationships, etc. If those lessons didn't produce a life-change, those lessons were not valuable and have not cost in the process. John Maxwell says that, "People change when they hurt enough that they have to, when they learn enough that they want to, and when they receive enough that they are able to."

How many of us have stopped learning and changing and started teaching? I realize that we should never abdicate our responsibilities as parents to "train up a child" but just maybe we shouldn't try so hard to keep our children from experiencing some things in life that will teach valuable lessons but rather be there for them while they are learning the lessons for themselves. Those will be the things that will make them better people. Why would we want to deprive them of that?

Remember this - a lesson has no value unless a price has been paid for it.