If you don't suceed, try, try again...

Here's a post by JerryD 1G:

Its about Confidence

My 10 year old daughter didn’t make the school track team this year. She made it last year, but not this year. It wasn’t because she wasn’t fast enough although she isn’t real fast and it wasn’t because she wasn’t strong enough to throw the shot put, because she is…so why didn’t she make the team? She didn’t make the team because she didn’t try out for the team.

After a bit of conversation and a few tears she revealed the real reason for her decision not to try out for track. It seems one of the little boys in her class told her she would never make it so she should save herself the embarrassment of looking slow and not even run. My first thought was…that little shit! How dare he do that to my little girl. And then after a few minutes of hard thinking of how “we” could get back at him it clicked. It had nothing to do with the little boy and everything to do with my girl’s fear of failure.

It’s been said that “fear of failure” is what drives people to greatness. That may be true but there still needs to be a sense of “I can do this if I try, and if I fail, it’s OK”. That belief starts at home with the parents. It’s up to us to teach our kids that anything is possible but only if we try. Not with what we say but with what we do, how we act, who we are as role models. We need to encourage our kids to step up even if mistakes are made. Most importantly, we need to help them understand that we all fail at some point but the real failure is not trying.

Me, I’m not so worried about track because Girls Softball starts this Friday.

JerryD 1G