What do you do when you make a mistake?

This morning, I had Jman finishing up the last of his birthday thank you cards. He was filling in K & D's names, and then had to sign his own at the bottom. He decided this time to do 2D/fat letters for his font instead of curly cues. By the end he was also adding eyes to each letter! He's a funny kid.

But the highlight of the activity was when he made a mistake. He accidentally wrote "B" when he was supposed to write "D" for the start of D's name. His response to his mistake blew me away. As soon as he was done, he snapped his head around to face me and had a very serious "oh no, what have I done?!?" look on his face! He didn't freak out. He didn't immediately erase. He didn't get upset and freak out. He didn't ignore me and try to fix it on his own. He LOOKED at me, with complete and total acknowledgement that he goofed up and had a problem on his hands. NOTHING could have made me happier!

What did I do? I commented, "Oh no! (pause) That's a 'B' not a 'D'!" And then he started erasing, quite intentionally. I waited for the meltdown. Often he'll get frustrated because it doesn't erase 100%. I was still holding my breath, but I needn't have. He still didn't meltdown. He erased the B, then thought a few seconds, and then drew a nice 2D/fat "D" quite to his satisfaction.

And that was it. No big deal. He moved on to the next letter, eventually finished, and that was it. No. Big. Deal.

Except that it WAS a big deal! His instinctive reaction was to share his mistake with me and check for my reaction! And then he stayed calm and fixed it and moved on! That is SO AWESOME! And I just had to share. :)