Parenting isn’t for wusses!

Mistakes Are a Part of Life

We have to learn to accept mistakes — do you know how?

Kimberlee Jakobe
5 min readMay 15, 2022

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CanvaPro by the author, Kimberlee

Pain is a teacher

As a mediator, I’ve seen a lot of pain that could be avoidable. How amazing our life would be if we could avoid pain.

The problem with this concept is that we’d miss a lot of lessons by avoiding all of the pain. Unfortunately, there are also people who often suffer the pain without ever learning the lesson and then end up having to keep repeating the lesson. How very defeating.

I’m a highly-caffeinated problem-solver. I’m always working on three things at once. One of my favorite messages I teach to my children is, “Life is too short to make all the mistakes yourself. You have to learn from the mistakes of others.”

Sometimes, I forget my daughter doesn’t have the experience to see an issue as clearly as I do. Trying to guide her to learn how to navigate her path while maintaining my distance and not trying to control the outcome is a challenge for me.

My daughter, Lulu (her nickname), has worked so hard this year. She’s twelve years old and in the 6th grade, and as most of you know, is a time in our lives when many of us face our first moments of independence from our parents.

Lulu is going to virtual middle school. She has a great mix of school friends, relationships, and opportunities to learn and grow. I have to give our virtual school and our principal a huge thumbs up. I admire her a lot.

Virtual school hasn’t been perfect, it has its challenges, but for where we are in our lives right now, this is an excellent option.

My youngest son passed away three years ago and our family is still grieving. There’s no time limit on pain, healing, or grief. My daughter was nine years old when Kaleb died. They were extremely close because of his autism — their relationship will mold her for the rest of her life.

After losing her brother, Lulu stopped caring about school.

This school year was the first time since losing her brother Lulu cared about school. And because of that, she had some catching up to do, she has worked really hard! My wife…

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Kimberlee Jakobe

Problem-solving advocate who writes. Reach me anytime~> kimberleejakobe@gmail.com