Helping Children Learn from Their Mistakes & Failures

Helping Children Learn from Their Failures and Mistakes. 

When I was a child, I was taught that hard work leads to your success. By the time I entered the “real world” this notion had been replaced by the concept that it wasn’t working harder but working smarter that would get us ahead in life. No, this does not mean that those with the higher IQ scores are going to have more successes than the rest of us.  What it does mean, is that those who are problem solvers, who utilize creativity, make the most of their resources and learn from their failures will often find themselves in a better position to succeed. I’d like to focus on the last point as something we should be teaching our kids on a regular basis: 

Learning from failures and mistakes. 

As a parent one of the hardest things to do is to allow your child to go through the inevitable failures life brings. We want to always be there to protect our kids from failure or from making those same mistakes as we might have oh so many years ago. We would much rather see them reap the rewards and riches of success without having to go through any pain to get there. 

Having a fear of failure or of making mistakes is something we all have dealt with. For some, it happens subconsciously possibly dictating a minor decision here or there or perhaps causing us to take the path of least resistance in an area of our lives. For others however, it causes painstaking anxiety, prevents us from taking risks and trying new things or even just being true to ourselves. Just as this fear lingers in us it’s also something that our children deal with as well. There will always be varying levels of this kind of fear as everyone is different. However regardless of if your child is a natural risk taker unafraid of failure, or you have witnessed first-hand the extreme disappointment after mistakes made, learning from failure is something that should be addressed by all parents with their children if only to try and shed some of the negativity that is associated with failure. 

As a little league baseball coach I come in contact with kids of all different backgrounds and skill levels. However regardless of where they are at on their baseball journey, I have noticed one similarity popping up over and over. They have been so trained to strive for perfection that more often than not when one of them strikes out they came back to the dugout head down, frustrated and maybe even on the verge of tears because of their supposed failure. The thing about baseball as with many other sports is, even the best athletes, the ones playing at a professional level fail more times than they succeed. Baseball players are considered great if they hit the ball 3 out of every 10 times. They may even make an All-Star team despite failing more than they succeed. Sports are filled with examples of how great success often comes side by side with failures and mistakes. 

Youth sports isn’t the only arena where we often see a fear of failure. Having experience working in classrooms both at the middle school and high school level, I would come across very bright students who would share this same fear of making mistakes. One of my first jobs out of college was teaching English as a second language abroad. In my classes, there were students of varying English speaking abilities, however some of the brightest students who had the most interest in learning English participated the least in class. We later found out that many of them shared a common fear of mispronouncing words, or getting an answer wrong as if this would somehow affect their English ability. As an English department, we made it a mission to make sure that our communication courses were filled with mistakes, and lots of them. If there were mistakes, it meant that the students were trying. They may have mispronounced words or jumbled up a sentence here or there, but these mistakes meant that they were putting themselves out there and in turn using those mistakes an opportunity to improve their abilities. 

To be clear, the goal shouldn’t be to brush aside feelings of anxiety over potential failure or disappointment from mistakes made, as these are perfectly natural and even healthy responses. However, it’s important to utilize times of failure to teach our kids how to work through anxiety and process disappointment using it as a tool for growth.  We should be teaching them that it’s ok to fail, because no matter how hard we try to protect them in life, at some point failure will rear its ugly head.

Fear of failure and mistakes is human nature and as such, it’s something we must consciously push back against when we see it in our kids. We should be teaching them how mistakes aren’t something that should be avoided, they should be learned from. The sooner we get rid of the cloud of negativity that is hanging over the idea of making a mistake the sooner our kids will be able to take healthy risks, challenge themselves and free up their creativity. We should be sharing stories of role models and icons such as J.K. Rowling, Michael Jordan or Walt Disney to name a few whose successes derived from failures. People who weren’t afraid to take risks and in turn made a difference in the world. 

Another thing we can do is to let our kids in on appropriate examples of mistakes we have overcome or maybe even a mistake or failure we are going through in the present. I think that as parents, we sometimes put unnecessary pressure on ourselves to be perfect in front of our children. To let them in on all of the positives but protect them from seeing any of the negatives. We know our kids better than anyone so we should have an idea of when it might be an appropriate time to share these mistakes with them. Maybe even share with them an example of something that didn’t go right at work and how you made it through to the other side. If our kids see us unafraid to fail it may go a long ways in their own resilience to adversity.

Finally our kids shouldn’t be afraid that they have to go through any mistakes or failures by themselves. Having that open line of communication where our kids know they can seek help in resolving a problems or just asking questions in general without fear of repercussion is extremely important. They should be encouraged to stretch their curiosity to the limits and take risks even if it means they may fail. After all, we will be there to remind them that failure is nothing to fear, and mistakes are not the end of the road, they are merely another stepping stone on their journey to success.