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Does failure provide an important lesson for children? Or are feelings of failure something to be avoided entirely?
Failure is part of life, however, how a child responds to failure is unique to the individual. Some may become more motivated, others becoming more disillusioned. Some children may take away lessons from failure, others left feeling defeated and deflated.
Understandably, there is a push to protect our children from feelings of failure due to the negative impact it can have on their self esteem or confidence. On the other hand, there are also a number of important lessons and life skills that can be learned through failure. Therefore, I wanted to discuss whether or not failure is an important lesson for children, or something to be avoided?
What does failure look like for a child?
Failure for children can take many forms and can be noticeable for the child from an early age. This could in form of something specific, like losing in a game or competition. To a more vague feeling of failure, like not being as good as their peers at a certain task or skill.
Every child will have their own level of resilience to feelings of failure. For some, it will take a lot for them to be impacted by a failure and they can be fairly resilient in response. For others, it may not take much for them to feel down on themselves when exposed to failure.
In order to protect those children who can struggle with feelings of failure, there is a growing call to try and protect these children and avoid feelings of failure where possible. However, I would ask if the feeling of failure should be avoided at all? Or is it a case of modifying our responses to children who fail?
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Our responses to children who fail
I don’t think it is unreasonable to say that failure can be a part of life. It is something that we all will experience to varying degrees at some point or another. However, how we respond to children who fail, can lay the groundwork for their capacity to cope with failure throughout their lives.
If your child is struggling to cope with a failure, it is important that they recognise and pay attention to the effort they put in, rather than just the outcome. Children could give 100% to a task or activity and still fall short of their own expectations. Therefore, diverting their attention to the fact that they tried their best, this is what is important. But in addition to this, children also need to see failure as a learning opportunity. What is it they can do next time to better the outcome? These types of conversations can help the child see past the failure. They understand the importance of trying hard and know what to do differently in future.
On the other hand, if children are not encouraged to see past their feelings of failure, and focus too much on the feeling itself, the learning opportunity can be missed. If repeated, children can wrapped up in these feelings of failure, or even start fearing the feeling itself. This can become a barrier to that child’s capacity to push themselves or test their skills in future. Moving into adulthood, this can be a significant disadvantage.
Is it important for children to fail?
When considering the above, the question could be asked, is it important for children to experience failure? Of course, you would want any experience of failure for your child to be minor and handled the right way. However, does it better prepare a child for adulthood, if they have experiences of failure and are able to take away the important lessons that can be learned from failure? Would children exposed to failure earlier, be better prepared than children who avoid failure?
Ultimately, these are questions without simple answers. However, they are useful questions to consider when deciding how to manage any feelings of failure your child may have.
Lessons children can learn from failure
As I had touched upon previously, there are important lessons that children can learn from failing. These lessons can build resilience, improve performance, increase humility and importantly, prepare them for adulthood.
We all face setbacks in our lives, therefore, developing resilience to these setbacks is an important skill to develop. Resilience helps us bounce back from these failures or set backs quickly, whilst continuing to be motivated to try again.
We all learn from making mistakes. Trial and error being a common phrase used. Some of our best leaps forward can be made from a backwards step (a failure). It is in these moments we learn what works, what does not work. We analyse ourselves and others around us. All in an attempt to grow and improve. This can be healthy learning space for our children and for me, not something to be avoided.
What is important to remember, is that children will need to be supported to find these lessons in failure. Some children will have difficulty finding that silver lining. Therefore, it falls on us as parents to help teach this skill and avoid the development of a fear of failure.
I read an interesting article on Helping Kids Learn To Fail from the Child Mind Institute. You can read for yourself here.
Is failure useful for later life?
If handled correctly, would it be reasonable to consider failure as a useful experience for children to have? Does it prepare them for later life?
This is where the subject may become more subjective. Personally, I think experiencing failure as a child can be an important component of future success. How many successful people have gone through their lives without experiencing failures or setbacks? Many actively talk about the challenges/failures they have experienced as the turning point.
It is a person’s capacity to deal with failure and respond to it positively, which can drive further success. As discussed above, there are a number of important lessons that children can learn from failure which increase the likelihood of success in the future. Whereas, the opposite could be true for a child who avoids the feeling of failure. Lessons are not learned and the same mistakes could be repeated.
I think it is important for children to want to be successful, but also understand that failure can be a part of the journey towards success.
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The “Participation Medal” culture
This brings me on to the “Participation Medal” culture that is growing, especially in schools. Many schools have adopted the idea of all children who participate in an event or activity are awarded medals/prizes, regardless of the outcome.
I am sure that we will all have our personal feelings towards this idea, based on our own experiences in the past. Personally speaking, I am not in favour of this type of approach with children. I understand the idea behind it and it is certainly well intentioned. However, I think in taking this approach, the lessons of failure are not being learned and we are not setting this child up to grow or improve. It is important that effort and participation is acknowledged and recognised. But rewarding this alone, I don’t feel sets the child up to be resilient to failure, or strive to improve in the future. Whereas, if handled correctly, you can still acknowledge a child’s effort, alongside the lessons of failure.
I have been brought up as a competitor in a range of different sports. Therefore, the idea of being successful and winning has always been something I aspire for. I have experienced failure on countless occasions in my early life. But I now look back incredibly grateful that I had this early exposure. This is because I now go into situations like job interviews, learning new skills or pushing myself out my comfort zone, with the lessons learned from previously failures and this fuelling my fire to be successful.
If I had not had these experiences of failure early on, I can’t help but think I wouldn’t be anywhere near as confident or capable of been successful. I would just be more worried about failing. But hey…that’s just me!
Summary
Ultimately, I think the question of whether or not failure is something to be avoided or is an important lesson, will come down to the individual child/parent. My personal opinion is that failure is a very important lesson for children and is not something to be avoided. Instead, it should be warmly welcomed.
Failure can teach humility, empathy, fuel competitiveness and motivation to be successful. All of which are excellent traits that set the child up well moving into adulthood. I would even go as far to say that I would be slightly concerned if my daughter didn’t experience failure at a young age. If she went through her early life only knowing success and getting the outcome that she wants, the day this doesn’t happen could hit her like a tonne of bricks! I am not saying I don’t want my daughter to be successful of course. But the ability to cope with failure is a skill in itself and a skill I rate highly.
Managing feelings of failure
It is vital that any feelings of failure are managed appropriately. Effort, attitude and commitment can all still be recognised, but this can be done alongside acknowledging a failure and still taking the learning from it. Whilst “rewarding” or avoiding a failure can ease self esteem concerns, I feel there are more effective ways of doing so, that also ensures the child still takes away the learning from the experience.
However, it can be unhelpful for a child to fail over and over without the support to help them improve. A child needs to understand why they didn’t win the competition, or what they need to do next time to improve a certain skill. Failure without clarity or support can impact a child’s self esteem and confidence. Therefore, it all comes down to the conversations we have with our children after a failure.
Life isn’t easy for any of us. We will hit barriers, things won’t go as planned, we will experience failures and set backs. These experiences are almost impossible to avoid. Which is why for me, building resilience to these experiences and learning how to positively overcome them with the right attitude and motivation, will better prepare our children for the rest of their lives.
Let me know your own thoughts/stories in the comments below!
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You raise some really great points, and ones that can actually be a great reminder even for adults. I think learning to fail successfully (learning from it and also knowing how to respond it, etc) is an essential life skill that’s vital children learn so they can carry this forward. Great post!
Learning how to fail is an important skill for children to learn as they go through life. It builds resilience and helps them manage future situations successfully. This was an excellent post.