Dr. Corinne Masur
Last week in The Sunday New York Times there was an article describing how college students need to to be TAUGHT that it’s okay to fail occasionally. Smith, a prestigious women’s college, offers a presentation called “Failing Well” during student orientation, which gives out a certificate saying, “You are hereby authorized to screw up, bomb or fail at one or more relationships, hookups, friendships, texts, exams or extracurriculars or any other choice associated with college…and still be a totally worthy, utterly excellent human.”
Evidently many 18 year olds are getting to college having suffered very few disappointments or failures of any kind. Or they get to college rarely having had to handle disappointment on their own. They are simply unprepared for this experience. Residence life offices are inundated with students who come in sobbing that they did not get their first choice of roommate, that they got less than an A- on an exam, or that they got rejected from a club.
How did we, as a society, or we as parents and educators and mental health professionals allow this to happen? We simply have to ask ourselves this question. Continue reading
“When elementary schools create a safe and healthy recess for students, there can be a major impact on individual kids and school climate overall. In schools with safe and healthy recess students are more active, more cooperative, and more likely to use strong conflict resolution tools. Schools also see more drops in bullying and disciplinary referrals, and reductions in the number of conflicts that start in recess, spill back into class, and take up valuable class time to resolve.”
Thoughtful Parenting 