Teaching your child that failure is a success!

Most of us hate failures and most of the times the fear of failures prevented us from moving forward. Frankly speaking, we’re afraid to fail because we’re afraid to look bad and being judged. In actual fact, failure is a part of life. Sometimes we need to fail in order to learn and grow, therefore we should learn not to look at failure as an ending event.  Who cares what people think?

It’s important to teach from young about failures. It is especially not easy, as a mom, to teach her own children about failures. Why? Because half of your heart you do not want to demoralize them, you will be wondering will the multiple times of failure result to having limiting beliefs. The other part of your heart, you want them to learn and to grow. I do allow smarties to face failures and strictly speaking, many times. The most recent one is the experiment that they have tried and didn’t work out as they expected. You can read more about it at Science Experiment: Vinegar Launcher.

After each failure, of course, it doesn’t feel good but, as adults, we will need to explain why it happens, how it happens and what should they do and how to work on it or improve it or work around it. Is not an easy task as there are no right or wrong answers to it. Life has no answer sheet, or does it?

So how do we teach our children about failures? Here are some quick tips:
1. Not everyone is a winner
Every parent hopes their child is the winner and every time when a child does something either you are praying so hard to make sure the child wins or assisting the child to make him/her win one way or the other. This is actually a terrible example to set and teach. Yes, winning is important and winning makes you feel great. Losing is as important as it helps a person to grow. It makes a child think how to improve further, how to get better next time.

2. Everyone has their own talent
You child may want to be a swimmer just like Joseph Schooling but he/she doesn’t have the stamina to swim the long distance. You child may want to be a singer but he/she carries a tune well. We don’t keep pushing for it when they can’t do it. Not everyone is cut out to do what they want. We need to find what other gifts our child has. Every child has their own unique talent and we need to help and guide them towards that. If your child can’t sing, maybe try musical instruments.

3. Persevere
As mentioned earlier, losing can be really demoralizing. We have to teach and guide our child how not to give up that easily. In other words, persevere. As a parent, we teach them how to set a realistic goal, how to work towards it and ask them what are the ways to work towards it. Be there to share your child’s frustration if he/she doesn’t get it and be there to compliment even if he/she doesn’t get it. Compliment your child for trying instead of giving up. Don’t use rewards, bribery or threats to make your child get there. In the long run, these won’t work.

4. Fail with dignity
Failure is not the end of the world. Do not let failure pull your child down. Admit that it didn’t work and find out what’s wrong. Don’t put your child down. Instead, focus on what your child can learn from it and use that as a jumping-off point.

As a parent, we want to protect your child as much as possible especially when it comes to failure. It’s very heartbreaking to watch your child’s hopes and dreams being dashed. In our society, we all have been conditioned that we need to come out on top otherwise you are a person who will not succeed. Avoiding failure and disappointment is not the success formula. It is essential that your child learns how to encounter failure and overcome it with dignity and a fuller understanding of what went wrong and how to get it better. That is effective parenting.

Is not a sin to fail, so support your child to persist beyond failure so that it can help them to prepare for setbacks in life in the future. Experiencing failure is a learning foundation that will help them thrive not only now but also into the future. As the saying goes: If you have never failed, you have never attempted anything that matters enough to you.