I was a fearful child who grew into a fearful adult. I was afraid (and still am) of a great many things, but one of my top fears was the fear of failure. As I have learned to tame that fear I have realised how critical it is for us as parents to help our kids crush their fears while they are still at the “gnawing gently at the soul” phase, as opposed to the “savagely shredding the soul to pieces and then burning the bits” stage.
Throughout my life I have tried to combat my fear of failure with tactics like over-compensation, avoidance, over-thinking and blind panic. As you can imagine, none of these were very good for my mental wellbeing. I would over-compensate and take everything extremely seriously, as if doing badly on an exam would somehow spell the end of the world for all humanity. If at all possible I would avoid doing things which I thought I might fail at, like anything involving a ball and running (arguably being severely visually impaired and fearing being hit in the face by an incoming ball I didn’t see coming might have something to do with this…). My favourite was always over-thinking the situation and coming up with the most far-fetched and terrifying answers to the question: “What if I fail?”. The last tactic – blind panic – was the most self-defeating and paralysing of all.
My daughter is similar to me in many positive ways – we are dedicated, tenacious and caring to name a few. But she also shares my fear of failure. For one thing, she is a high achiever academically and she places a lot of pressure on herself to maintain her self-imposed standards for success. Just recently she admitted to me in a quiet, fearful and defeated voice, that she hadn’t done very well on a maths test. Her definition of “not doing very well” is my definition of a reasonably good mark and her dad’s definition of genius, but in her mind she had failed. We talked things through, as we have done on the occasions of previous perceived failures, and she saw things in a completely new light. She immediately looked happier and more energised and ready to take on the next challenge life threw at her.
I thought that by sharing some of the things I do to help my daughter change her mindset when it comes to failure, I might be able to help you when you are faced with a child who is disappointed and upset by their own perceived failure.
Keep in mind that there is no magic formula for raising a resilient child when it comes to failure, but that constantly reinforcing positive ideas about failure can slowly help them create a change which will carry them safely through all of the trials of life.
Remind them constantly that failure doesn’t make you love them any less
You don’t need to remind them once, or twice or even ten times. You need to remind them constantly. As much as you nag at them about their room looking like the aftermath of a natural disaster, or the fact that the washing basked is literally a few meters away and they still seem to need GPS to find it and put their dirty washing in, that is how much you need to remind them that your love is theirs with no strings attached.
When our kids make a mistake or feel that they have failed at something, our reaction matters. It’s perfectly normal to be disappointed when your child desperately wanted to be chosen for the hockey team but they didn’t make the cut. What they don’t understand is that our disappointment is on their behalf, not because we are actually disappointed in them. Even when they do something incredibly dumb – like sticking a fork into a mixer at age 11 while it was on, because, and I quote, “I wanted to see what would happen” – they have to be reminded that despite the volume and tone of our voice in those moments, we love them no matter what.
When my daughter came to me with her disappointing test results (disappointing to her, not me), the first thing I told her is that I love her no matter what marks she gets at school. Good marks aren’t going to make me love her more and even the worst marks won’t make me love her less. This applies to the mixer incident as well (but only once I had calmed down enough to form sentences that were longer than: “NOOOOO!!!”, “What on earth!”, “Why did you…?”).
Our children attach their own meaning to our reactions. Our facial expression, tone of voice, posture and even words which might not be as carefully chosen as they need to be, can create the idea that they are somehow worth less when they fail.
Keep reminding your kids that your love is unconditional and that it is completely unrelated to their successes or failures. It feels good to say and it feels good to hear no matter how many times it’s repeated. As parents we are already professional naggers, so why not use that skill for something which gets way better results? Don’t let a day go by when you don’t remind your kids how much you love them.
Teach them to put their failure into context
Failure seems like such a big thing when it happens. It grows in our minds and ends up taking much more space than it deserves. Not being able to see the bigger picture when it comes to failure makes it feel like the end of the world.
My daughter has many dreams, one of which is to study veterinary science one day. She knows that to get into vet school you need extremely good marks and that is why she places so much pressure on herself academically. Whenever she gets a mark back which she feels isn’t good enough for vet school she feels like it marks the beginning of the end of her journey towards living that dream. In situations like this, I remind her that tests and exams are just the quickest and most convenient way for educators to test her level of knowledge and understanding of a specific topic, and that preparing for and writing them is in and of itself a skill. At this stage of her schooling, she needs to focus on building the skills to prepare for and write tests and exams effectively, the marks are actually not that important in the greater scheme of things (this little nugget of truth is best not shared with kids who would rather cut the grass of an entire rugby field with nail clippers than study). Later in her school career when she applies for higher education, her marks will absolutely matter, but even then, there is a whole world of dreams out there just waiting to be discovered if one dream doesn’t work out.
No matter what age we are, we all have the tendency to focus on the negative rather than the positive. Remind your kids that one test score that they are unhappy with by no means negates every good test score before it, and one friendship that goes sour doesn’t negate all the other good friendships they have. Every failure is also relative in the greater scheme of things. Making a few mistakes on a primary school maths test isn’t going to affect my daughter’s dreams of vet school, whereas putting a thermometer in the wrong end of a cat during an assessment at varsity just might!
Be open with them about times in your past when you have failed
As parents, we know how amazing it feels to have our kids look up to us as the fountain of all the knowledge of the universe. That inevitably changes over time (teaching your kids to safely google things quickly downgrades your status of “fountain of knowledge” to “trickle of drool from the corner of a dog’s mouth”), but why would we want to speed the process in any way? We tend to let them think we have all the answers and that we always know what we are doing. We are the responsible adults in the relationship after all and shouldn’t that be the case?
The problem with this approach is that we hide our failures and shortcomings from our kids which makes them think there is something terribly wrong with them when they fail at something. And it’s not just parents, the majority of people tend to do this because everyone wants to save face and fears that they will face rejection for their failures. We cover up our failures, we pretend they never happened and we don’t give them any credit for the positive ways they influenced our lives. Our kids see all of this going on around them and think that the only way to respond to their failures is with shame and blame.
Failure is actually a natural part of growth. If you can help your children understand this you can help them weather failure with confidence and without them blaming themselves or others.
A teen who attended the anxiety and depression support group I facilitated was struggling with their fear of failure. They were so afraid to fail their exams that they weren’t able to concentrate on their studies, which of course made them even more stressed. Something amazing happened after they opened up about their fears – every other person in attendance (mostly adults and including their parent) shared a story about how they had failed in the past and how it had helped them grow into the person they were. This teen was so relieved upon hearing that so many other people had failed – and gone on to survive and thrive – that they immediately felt less pressure and could relax and focus more easily.
My daughter has been amazed by all the stories of failure my husband and I have shared with her from our own past experiences. Amazed because those failures didn’t spell the end of our hopes and dreams, they were just obstacles which encouraged us to reach higher or change direction completely. Instead of losing credibility with her we have actually gained more credibility, because if we got through all of that (and survived a portion of our lives without cellphones and google) we must know a thing or two about life!
Share the stories of your past failures in an age-appropriate and understandable way. You will empower your kids and help them to see failure as a comma instead of a full stop.
Help them find something to learn whenever they fail
Every failure has something to teach us if we look hard enough. Failure is always associated with blame – we blame ourselves, others or the situation. But what if we changed our focus and that of our kids to finding a lesson?
My daughter entered a reading competition a while back. She has always been a devourer of books, evolving from a little bookworm into a pre-teen book-a-conda. A reading competition seemed right up her street and directly in her driveway. Nonetheless she practiced tirelessly day in and day out, but the competition didn’t go as she had hoped and she didn’t end up placing. At first she was devastated, but we talked and talked and eventually she could see the lesson in the failure. She was an incredibly good reader, but she was a nervous public speaker (join the club with most of the human population right?) and needed to work on that skill to be able to read confidently in front of judges. This helped her realise that her failure was not at all a failure, just an indication that she had something new to work on, namely public speaking.
You can take the sting out of a failure by simply helping your child to see that they can take something away from it. Just make sure they’re taking away something positive – “I’m meant to be an entrepreneur and school is just for losers” is not the takeaway you’re aiming for when your child fails an exam with merit. “I need to clarify the requirements, get some help and take this more seriously next time” is more along the lines of what you are aiming for.
Support them in creating a change before they try again
As discussed above, it’s important to find a lesson in every failure – something to take away which can help us grow. Following on from that, we need to apply that lesson moving forward so that we don’t repeat the same failure. We’ve all heard the saying “if you fail to plan, you plan to fail”, but it’s also true that “if you plan and fail, adapt till you prevail”.
Whenever my daughter feels like she has failed at something, we process it by talking it over and finding the lesson. Then I ask her an extremely important question: “So what do you think you should change before you try again?” This is an empowering question because it helps kids take control of a situation that felt completely out of their control. They also feel more independent and gain confidence because you are not prescribing what they should do, but instead inviting them to decide on their own way forward. Depending on their age you may need to guide them a little, but as they get older you will be amazed at the insightful answers they come up with. For my daughter and I, this has led to really great conversations about better ways to study, how to choose your friends more wisely and the fact that training your dog to soar gracefully over a course of jumps like a show-pony depends completely on your dogs’ ability to weigh the opportunity cost of treats versus effort (Skye loves my daughter and he loves treats, but effort not so much).
Don’t let your kids get stuck on what happened. Getting stuck on a failure can affect the rest of their lives, whereas encouraging them to move forward by helping them devise a great plan for the future sets the standard for every future setback.
Help them redefine their idea of failure
I asked my daughter recently what she defined as failure in terms of test scores. She said that when she got more than five things wrong or less than 80% she felt like she had failed. I could relate because I grew up with very similar ideas. Her dad on the other hand didn’t much care for school and lived a much happier childhood because he saw any number on his report without a red ring around it as a win! The interesting thing is that her father and I have never put any pressure on her to achieve high marks, she just keeps her goal of becoming a vet in mind and that is what her reasoning is for always needing to achieve academically.
I suggested that we try to redefine failure – maybe if she didn’t learn something from a lower test score, didn’t clarify her understanding of what she got wrong or didn’t change her approach to studying next time, then she could consider it a failure. She agreed that that would be a good way to think of it, and with one conversation she started move her focus to making the most of the process of learning rather than allowing her self-worth to go up and down based on test scores.
No matter what your child feels that they have failed at and no matter the amount of potential you feel they might have (my husband’s parents definitely recognised his potential genius from an early age because he was an expert at escaping and getting up to the most incredible kinds of mischief from the time he learned to walk), helping redefine their idea of what constitutes a failure will help free them from the fear of it.
Get them to focus on flying rather than falling
We want to protect our kids, to wrap them in cotton wool, bubble wrap and some styrofoam too, just for good measure. Sometimes we hold them back because we are so afraid that they will fail (according to whatever our definition of failure in that context is). We focus on the possibility of them experiencing something negative and end up directing their focus onto the negative possibilities as well. If instead, we help them redefine failure and then encourage them to think of all the positive things they could experience if they try – we empower them and teach them that growth comes from doing the things we might be terrible at at first!
I remember taking part in a public speaking competition when I was little. I wrote my speech (all about horses naturally, because that was literally all I was interested in. My mom actually got called in by a teacher one day because I drew something other than a horse and the teacher thought it merited a meeting), practiced hard and presenting it… but nerves got the best of me making me forget bits and rush through the rest. In my mind, third place was a huge fail and I never took part in any public speaking competitions again. I know my mom was totally unaware of my internal mental labelling of the experience. Now that there is so much more research into the way our thoughts affect our actions it’s so important to help our kids think differently about failure so that they can reach for the stars in whatever manner they choose. I have always secretly longed to do public speaking, but that perceived failure from so long ago was like feeding an innocent little mogwai after midnight and turning it into a terrifying and destructive self-sabotaging gremlin. I try not to feed any of my fears now (or my daughters’ fears)… no matter what time of day or night!
We all want our kids to fly, but we keep tethering them to the ground with our perceptions of failure and what it will do to them. Rather equip them to deal with failure and then set them free to test their wings. They will fall, but they will also soar, and they will learn more from that journey of self-discovery than they ever could if the fear of failure ruled their lives.
Portal to Change 