Pro Parenting Tip: Make Failure Your Friend

Any of these sound familiar?

“My son gives up too easily.”

“My daughter blames everyone else for her mistakes.”

“My son is lazy.”

“My daughter lies all the time.”

These are just a few signs that your teen has a fear of failure.

As parents, we want the very best for our kids. We see their potential and are determined to help them live up to it. It breaks our heart when we see them struggle.

So, we give them pep talks, encourage them to push harder, tell them they are smart enough, talented enough, athletic enough…good enough.

We celebrate their wins and brag about their achievements on Facebook and Instagram. We’re proud of their success and want them to know that.

I get that. I’m right there with you.

But there is a dark side to putting so much focus on their successes.

• They learn that it’s not okay to fail.
• They start to believe that they must earn our love and acceptance.
• They begin to measure their value against everyone else.

And there is always someone that is smarter, more talented, more athletic, prettier, more popular than they are. More so now than ever before. When we were growing up, we just had our classmates to compare ourselves to. Our kids have the entire world!

They see hundreds, thousands, maybe millions of kids that are better (aka more lovable) than they are.

That means, no matter how hard they try, they will never be enough.

Rather than being motivated to get better, they give up. (They’d rather look lazy than risk showing they’re not as smart as you think.)

• Rather than learning from their mistakes, they try to hide them.
• Rather than feeling proud of what they’ve accomplished, they feel embarrassed and ashamed of their shortcomings.

What can we do?

Make failure your friend.

• Instead of celebrating their wins, celebrate their personal improvement.
• Instead of getting mad when they make bad decisions, get curious. How can you help them develop skills to make better decisions in the future?
• Instead of focusing on their successes, focus on their effort.
• Instead of seeing failure as something to avoid, see it as something to aspire to.

Failure is brave. It shows we’ve pushed ourselves outside our comfort zone.

Failure is growth. It provides information that can move us closer to success.

Failure is inevitable. If we fear failure, we fear living.

THE BOTTOM LINE

If you want your teen to discover their full potential, give them plenty of room to fail along the way.