As a parent, watching your child fail is hard. Everything inside of you wants to rescue them so they won’t get hurt. Unfortunately, it’s not always possible to stop your child from failing, nor is it healthy for them when you swoop in for the rescue. It turns out failure could be good for kids. You can teach your kids to deal with their mistakes and learn valuable life lessons whenever they falter.
How to Teach Children to Fail With Grace
Here are twelve ways to help your children learn to fail without fear.
1. Teach them to accept setbacks in life
Life is full of unexpected events. Teaching your child early to accept setbacks is key to their ability to learn to fail without fear. Unfortunately, even well-meaning parents can inadvertently make a child fearful of failure. Here are some suggestions to help them view setbacks as a way of life.
Setbacks: Although not pleasant, setbacks aren’t the end of the story. They’re an unexpected, temporary bump in the road.
Keep moving: Setbacks are situations where you potentially need to change course, not give up. For example, maybe your child needs to repeat a class or try out for the soccer team when rejected by the football team. Changing course due to a setback can turn out for good.
Parents have setbacks, too: When you experience setbacks, be sure to include your kids in the experience. Explain that you’re disappointed about needing to get a new job, that the family needs to move to help relatives, or not being able to work out a problematic family situation. As they witness how you go through the setback, it helps normalize failure and difficulties in life so they won’t be surprised or afraid of them.
2. Be honest about failure
Making failure the end of the world isn’t helpful for your child, but telling that failure is a beautiful experience is also dishonest. Be honest. Failing is no fun. It stinks to fail at something you’ve worked so hard for. When you are unclear about failure, it sets your child up for:
False expectations about life Feelings of shame when they fail Inability to deal with failing Overreacting when they make mistakes Withdraw emotionally when they fail May make fun of others who fail Lose their confidence
3. Praise their efforts rather than their abilities
Avoid simply praising your child’s abilities. Instead, ask them what strategies they used or how long it took them. Studies found that ability praise is ineffective when a child fails compared to effort praise. So if you give your child credit for their ability to do a task, it can lead them to feel helpless later on when they fail. They may feel negative about themselves and want to give up.
Effort praise teaches kids to focus more on the process of their work and obtain new learning skills when they encounter setbacks. Ability praise causes kids to focus on a fixed mindset, but effort praise helps them have more of a growth mindset. Researchers also found that ability praise encourages kids to cheat because they can’t face failing. So, they fix the results to guarantee they don’t fail.
4. Model how to respond when they fail
More is caught than taught applies here. When you make mistakes, be sure to model persistence. Your example helps your kids learn how to respond to their mistakes. Learning to say things like …
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