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Last night I lovingly watched my 9 month old daughter start to crawl up the stairs in my home, stop part way to look back at me with a thrill of accomplishment… only to then lose her balance and fall all the way to the bottom, landing on her head.

I was not surprised. In fact I knew it would happen and intentionally did nothing to prevent it it. I wanted her to fall.

To be fair, I didn’t let her plummet from the TOP of the staircase, if I’d done that I’d be writing this post from inside a prison cell. Instead she fell while sitting on the 2nd step from the bottom, so she fell a total of about 18 inches.Cried for about 15 seconds, and then started back up the stairs all over again.

So why did I let her fall?

Because I think allowing my daughter to fall, teaches her a vital lesson in life.

It Teaches Her That Failure Is Only Temporary

Let me put it this way…

If I had swooped in to save my daughter from bonking her head, sure, I would have saved some tears today, but in reality I was doing so at the expense of even more tears in her future, or worse.  Because by robbing her of learning a simple life lesson about falling when falling doesn’t hurt that bad, I would have been choosing to let her learn the lesson later, when falling could hurt MUCH, MUCH more.

Because if my daughter didn’t learn the lesson about how important it is to pay attention 2 steps from the bottom, she’s still not going to be paying attention when she’s 2 steps from the top.  And the lesson you learn about gravity while falling down a staircase two steps from the top is a bit more intense then falling just two steps from the bottom.

In fact it’s debilitating!

I don’t just mean physically debilitating either… probably even more crippling are the psychological damages.  When a child receives a very intense amount of pain when attempting to do something new they become what is called risk aversive.

You see this most commonly when comparing children who’s parents involve them in sports and activities where children have to overcome a lot of fear and anxiety like, snow skiing, water skiing, mountain climbing, or riding motorcycles, compared to children who are never given the opportunity to do these activities.

The very nature of learning how to do these activities requires that a child will fall down, and yes, sometimes hurt themselves.  But because they are young, they aren’t going fast enough to really hurt themselves.  Oh sure they get bumps and bruises, but because they aren’t going very fast or falling from very high, it doesn’t hurt bad enough to make them want to stop.

These children learn their lessons about what caused them pain, and change their technique to avoid it in the future.  And by doing this over and over again, they end up eventually doing things that most of us wold be far to afraid to do effortlessly; all because they were allowed to baby step their way through the process until the end result of a downhill snow skier throwing their body down a mountain at 80mph seems miraculous.

But rob a child of those experiences.  Don’t let them experience small levels of pain while doing something new and exciting and you create a child who grows up never having learned to flex their “Fear Overcoming” muscles.  Let a child not have to overcome fears for long enough and you create a child who become risk aversive.

And I Would Rather Shackle My Children To A Ball And Chain, Then Raise Them To Be Risk Aversive

As I look around at the people I meet on a daily basis, it seems to me that almost all of them are afraid to go live the life they really want to live.  Most people are “playing it safe” at life.  They aren’t going out on a limb and going for their dreams.

And I just don’t want my son or daughter to grow up to settle for average.  So I spend a lot of time thinking about how I should be raising my daughter, and how I should be raising my son and I’m convinced that one of my responsibilities as a father is to prevent them from becoming risk aversive.

That’s why I let me daughter fall down the stairs, and it’s why I’ll keep letting her fail… because the lessons your children learn from picking themselves back up after failing… while they still can pick themselves up are priceless.  I know my childhood was full of valuable lessons learned from failure that had profound impact on who I became, from my father helping me ski down the first black diamond run that I swore would kill me as a 5 year old, to NOT bailing me out when I maxed out two credit cards and hosed my credit rating as a teenager.  Those lessons shaped me as a child, they shaped you, and they’re shaping your children as well.

So go out of your comfort zone today and allow your child to take a risk you wouldn’t normally let them take.  And even if they fail, keep allowing them to stretch and grow through failure.  Because nobody ever became great who was mothered to death.

But enough about my opinion, I want to hear what you think.

Did you learn a life lesson as a child that drastically affected the way you think about the world, or your life.  If so, please share your story by commenting below.  I think other parents would find it helpful to hear about lessons you learned from childhood.