Somewhere in the not so distant past, we as a society decided that it wasn’t okay for our kids to fail.
Everyone has to be a winner, whether that means getting a medal for participating (we’ve previously talked about the flawed logic behind the participation medal), youth sports games where no one keeps score, or elementary schools that require every kid in the class be invited to any birthday parties that take place.
The idea behind this seemingly positive gesture of insulating kids from feeling like failures was obviously a well-intended one.
We want our kids to have positive self-esteem and a confident self-image.
Because if they don’t, they’ll always be afraid to try new things, they’ll never reach their full potential, and will go through life feeling as if they’re not good enough.
While the goal of raising kids full of self-esteem and armed with a positive self-image is a great one, trying to accomplish it by pounding our kids with how great they are and never letting them taste failure inevitably creates the opposite result.
Fact is, humans aren’t born knowing how to deal with failure. Those connections are only made in the brain as we problem solve and work through challenges and difficult situations.
And when “helicopter mom” swoops in to save us every time she smells a whiff of failure in the air, our brains never become equipped to handle failure, work through it, and come out better because of it.
The problem of course is that avoiding failure for our entire lives is impossible.
And the ill effects of a generation of participation medal kids who are now reaching college is being recognized by the schools they attend.
Over the past five years or so, college students are exhibiting increased levels of emotional dependency, anxiety, and depression.
Researchers have concluded that one of the biggest contributing factors to the deficits we’re seeing in college students’ emotional readiness to enter into the adult world is overcontrolling parents who are misguidedly hoping to help their children succeed by going to any level to protect them from even the smallest of failures.
Interestingly, if you’ll look into the background of the most successful adults you’ll nearly always see a road behind their success that was filled with bumps and potholes.
And in talking to these same people, they’ll tell you that it was their failures that enabled them to eventually build the successful life they now lead.
The question then is this: As parents, how do we allow our kids to experience the right amount of failure? Just enough to build the brain power they need to handle life, yet not enough that results in them giving up and deciding they can’t do anything well.
While there is no one size fits all solution, kids have different temperaments and will inherently handle failure differently, there are four ways we can work to help our children successfully fail.
Stop it With All the Praise
When you constantly tell your child “good job,” and pump her up with compliments you risk her becoming dependent on the praise and requiring positive external feedback to feel valued.
One big key here is that you want to be praising effort and not outcome.
A telling example is seen in a study done by Carol Dweck, a pioneer in the area of mindset.
Dweck gave two groups of fifth grade students puzzles to complete. One group was told “You must be smart at this,” when completing the puzzles.
The other group was told, “You must have worked really hard,” when they completed the puzzles.
When the students were unable to complete more difficult puzzles, they were given easier ones again.
The “smart” group did 20% worse on the easier puzzles than they initially had, while the “hard working” group did 30% better.
Researchers concluded that the “smart” group was discouraged by their failure at the harder puzzles, while the “hard workers” had learned that they were hard workers and therefore kept at the task.
Obviously you want to build up your child’s self-esteem, just be cautious of the words you use and don’t be afraid to acknowledge when things don’t go so great either, and to let your child know that’s okay too.
Always Find the Lesson in Failure
Work with your child to help him appreciate failure.
Another downside of our everyone-and-everything’s-a-success mindset is that it makes kids see failure as a 100% bad event and deprives them of the very positive lessons that come from failure if you only know how to look for them.
Remember, kids weren’t born thinking failure is a bad thing. If they were, none of us would have ever persisted long enough to learn how to walk.
When your child’s experienced a “failure,” whether it be in sports, school, or socially, he often won’t want to hear your “stupid lessons” over his tears of disappointment.
Share them anyway, maybe after he’s calmed down a bit.
You may not think he’s taking them in or getting anything from them, but he will internalize them and use them, maybe even subconsciously, to learn that success is often at the end of a string of failures.
And, that what seems like a failure today might become the best thing that ever happened to him in retrospect.
Encourage Exploration
One thing several classroom teachers have noted is that many of their children display a fear of failing when it comes to class participation and activities.
As parents, we tend to encourage our kids towards things we think they can be successful at.
The activities we choose may not always be the ones our kids are interested in, or may not capture all of their interests.
Your child will naturally gravitate towards certain hobbies, activities, clubs, and subjects in school. Encourage her to get involved in whatever she expresses an interest in.
Make sure she knows she doesn’t have to be the best at anything.
The test of whether she should do it is whether it makes her happy.
She may enjoy gymnastics but share none of the Olympic aspirations many of her fellow young gymnasts have.
That’s okay, let her explore what she’s interested in and stick with the things she likes.
With some kids, you can’t find enough hours in the day for all they want to be involved in.
But with many, it will take your encouragement and active participation to get your child to voice what her interests are and actually walk into that first class despite all the unknowns in her head.
Be a Good Role Model
If you haven’t already figured this out, your kids soak up everything you say and do, even though they often try to pretend they’re paying no attention to you and would rather die than be like you.
How you handle failure in front of your children is crucial.
When you pull into the grocery store parking lot having left your purse at home on the kitchen counter, your first reaction may be to mutter something like, “I’m so stupid.”
As an adult, you know this mishap doesn’t actually make you stupid.
But when your child witnesses that, he thinks, “Boy, if that makes mommy stupid, I must really be stupid when I do X, Y, or Z.”
And when your child then forgets something, his natural reaction will be to think, "I'm stupid."
Choose your words carefully, and do vocalize them to your children.
Say something like, “Silly mommy, I was in a hurry and forgot my purse. It’ll just take 10 minutes to run back and get it.”
Don't put too much pressure on yourself to be the perfect parent, but do own up to how important your role is in helping your child develop his self-esteem, self-confidence, and self-image.
And when you do want to feel like the perfect parent, come on over the KidsPartyCharacters.com and book your child's next birthday party.
With over 200 characters to choose from, along with all the most-loved party activities like face painting, balloon twisting, and cotton candy, treating your child to a Kids Party Characters party is one thing you can't fail at.
Also connect with us on Facebook for daily updates on the magic we create at children's parties as well as tips and strategies for raising happy and healthy kids, even if they do fail sometimes!
No comments:
Post a Comment