Teaching Your Child to Fail

Disappointment is a feeling that most people do not enjoy experiencing. Whether it is disappointment in yourself for failing to do something that you had planned to do, or whether it is disappointment in someone else for failing to meet your expectations. The feeling is simply not enjoyable. Unfortunately, there are times in life when we simply can not control whether we are disappointed or not.

Just because disappointment is a feeling we try to avoid, it doesn’t mean that we should shield our children from it completely. As a parent, it’s natural to want the best for your child and to always try to put them in a place where they can succeed. It’s not uncommon for a parent to stop a child from experiencing disappointment. As much as you dislike the feeling, you simply don’t want your child to experience it.

However, it’s important to let your child experience disappointment in their life, especially when it comes to them not living up to something that they should have completed. If you constantly shield your child from the consequences of their actions, then they’ll learn too late in life what it really means to fail. As hard as it is to do, you must let your child feel disappointment in themselves in order to grow.

No one ever succeeded without failing first. The only way to learn is by first experiencing disappointment in not achieving a goal. As you gain more experience in life, you may not have to fail in every new adventure you embark on, but it will take many years of experience and learning before you get to that point. The longer you shield your child from failure, the harder it will be for them as they grow older.

You need to teach your child how to fail. This doesn’t mean that you simply let your child do everything on their own and fail without any type of support. If you’re not able to support your child then it will be even worse for them as they won’t know how to respond. Instead, they’ll simply flounder and decide that they don’t want to try as they don’t like the experience of failing to achieve what they set out to do.

Instead, you must be there to support them in their failures and help guide them through the experience. You let them feel the disappointment, and then you provide the encouragement and direction on how to correctly respond. Discuss what led to their failure with them - were they unprepared? Was someone more prepared? Were they distracted or unfocused? Or was it something else?

As you work through what led to the failure, also discuss what they can do in the future to not fail. This will depend on what led to the failure, but generally it means that they’ll have to spend more time practicing and preparing in order to succeed. Most importantly, help them to understand that failure at first doesn’t mean they can’t succeed. Make sure they know that in order to succeed, they must keep trying.

Let your child fail. And then be there to guide them through the process of how to respond to that failure, and how to succeed in the future. This important lesson will prepare them for their future without you.