Parents Who Freak Out at Mistakes May Hand Kids Anxiety
A parent-child digital program called Making Mistakes targets error sensitivity, the habit of treating small mistakes like emergencies. That overreaction tracks anxiety risk in kids, and the kitchen-table fix often starts with your face when the worksheet comes home wrong.
The red mark on the worksheet is rarely the whole story. The story is your face.
Psychologists call the habit of treating small errors like emergencies error sensitivity. Kids who overreact to mistakes show a stronger brain response to errors, and that pattern tracks higher anxiety risk as they grow.
A Florida State team built a parent-child digital program around that idea. Making Mistakes teaches caregivers and 5- to 7-year-olds to treat mess-ups as ordinary practice.
A 2026 study in JMIR Pediatrics and Parenting watched how families actually used it. Weekly module login rates were low. Families still described calmer kitchen-table reactions, and kids who could borrow a “mistake buddy” script when they messed up.
For households where a B+ still feels like a family weather event, the useful part is the transmission path. Kids inherit standards. They also inherit how adults behave when something goes wrong.
What the Making Mistakes research says
Isaac A. Mirzadegan (then Florida State University; now VA/UCSF), Ericka M. Lewis (University of Maryland), Sally L. Cole (FSU), and Alexandria M. Meyer (Santa Clara University; formerly FSU), “Family Engagement in a Digital Intervention Targeting Risk for Anxiety in Parent-Child Dyads: Mixed Methods Study,” JMIR Pediatrics and Parenting (2026), DOI 10.2196/79898. Making Mistakes is a web-based cognitive-behavioral prevention program for caregivers and 5- to 7-year-olds with elevated error sensitivity (negative overreactivity to mistakes / perfectionism). Core ideas: mistakes as learning, “mistake buddy” vs “mistake bully,” making mistakes on purpose, encouraging challenge-zone behavior, modeling calm responses, putting effort ahead of outcome, and parent “special time.” Mixed-methods sample: 87 dyads for adherence (completion of weekly modules averaged ~20%; parent–child adherence correlated r≈0.95); 18 dyads interviewed. Qualitative themes included mindful parenting, kids using mistake-buddy language, and perceived drops in performance anxiety for some families. Sample caveat: mostly White, highly educated, multi-parent, higher-income homes; Asian parents were ~1% of the quantitative sample. The program builds on Meyer’s earlier work linking a larger error-related negativity (ERN) in children to anxiety risk, and on a Behavior Therapy 2023 pilot of a brief computerized intervention targeting error-related brain activity in young children. An expanded RCT is underway (NIMH K01MH117366).
Error sensitivity, the habit of treating mistakes like emergencies, tracks anxiety risk in children. A parent-child program called Making Mistakes targets that pathway by training calmer adult reactions. For high-achievement households, the first fix is often the emotional weather around a wrong answer.
Error sensitivity is a face more than a grade
Alexandria Meyer, a psychologist who has spent years measuring kids’ brain responses to mistakes, describes error sensitivity as the tendency to react badly to your own errors. Worrying over mistakes is also a classic piece of maladaptive perfectionism.
In lab work, that pattern shows up as a larger error-related negativity, a quick brain signal after a wrong answer. A bigger signal in early childhood predicts higher anxiety risk later.
You do not need an EEG to spot the kitchen version. A child freezes before erasing. Tears arrive over a wrong math problem.
A parent’s voice climbs three notches when a bowl tips.
The grade is information. The overreaction is what teaches danger.
Kids copy how you recover
Reviews of parenting and child perfectionism keep pointing at two parent paths. One is high expectations plus criticism. The other is modeling: kids watch how you treat your own typos, parking tickets, and burned rice.
Meyer’s group has also linked controlling parenting with a larger error signal in 5- to 7-year-olds. The message lands even when you think you are “just helping.” Hovering, correcting mid-sentence, and sighing at a 90 can all register as: mistakes are not safe here.
In the Making Mistakes interviews, parents said the videos named something they already half knew. One parent understood a child’s anger as a reaction to mistakes and punishment, not a mystery personality.
That naming helps. Before you add another tutor hour, check the emotional weather around errors.
What the program actually asks families to practice
Child modules teach short scripts: mistakes are how we learn, mistakes can be funny, listen to your mistake buddy, stand up to your mistake bully. Kids also practice making small mistakes on purpose and trying hard things in a “challenge zone.”
Parent modules ask adults to model a calm recovery, respond warmly when a child errs, put effort ahead of outcome, and protect one stretch of child-led play time.
Families in the engagement study often skipped later weekly videos. Many still said the baseline ideas stuck: special time, noticing their own tone, letting a child attempt something hard without a rescue speech.
You do not need the full six-month site to borrow the idea. The first five seconds after a mistake matter more than the lecture that follows.
When a B+ still feels like a crisis at home
The JMIR sample was mostly White and highly educated. Asian parents made up about 1% of the quantitative group, so treat any diaspora read as analogy, not a finding from that sample.
The mechanism still maps onto many diaspora kitchens. Relatives treat report cards like family reputation.
A near-perfect score gets a “what about the missing points” audit. Kids learn that love arrives after the correction list.
Error sensitivity can look like excellence from the outside. Inside, it can look like a child who will not raise a hand, will not try a new instrument, or melts down when a worksheet is imperfect.
If your house runs on achievement, keep the ambition if you want it. Lower the emergency siren that goes off when ambition meets a red mark.
A script for the next wrong answer
When the worksheet comes home messy, try: “Show me the hard part. What did you try first.” Save the grade talk for later, after the recovery feels shared.
When you mess up in front of them, narrate it out loud: “I burned the rice. Annoying. We will make toast and try again tomorrow.” Kids need to see adults recover, not only adults succeed.
If relatives police a B+, borrow a line: “We care about effort and next steps more than a perfect sheet. She already knows what went wrong.”
Our guides on achievement pressure and the tutoring spiral are for the weeks when the calendar, not the red pen, is the anxiety engine. Tonight, start smaller. Watch your face when something goes wrong.