When Children Fail

Q: My eleven-year-old daughter tried out for a local children’s theatrical production and didn’t get a speaking part. She did make it to the chorus, but she’s crushed and says she doesn’t want to be in the chorus. She’s been moping around the house ever since she found out and I’m at a loss with how to help her.

A: Defeat in any form can taste bitter, but especially to a child, as children usually count on something happening just because they want it to occur. Lengthy explanations as to why she wasn’t picked are not going to help because she’s not mature enough to appreciate that nor does she want to understand.

The truth is always best, and it doesn’t have to be mean. You probably don’t know why she wasn’t chosen. It could be because someone else was better, or the director wanted a certain “look,” or he knows the family of the girl who was picked. All of those are situations that we as adults encounter every day in the work world and social world. So skip trying to parse out the why and focus instead on the what.

The what is that she wasn’t chosen, and she needs to learn how to “lose” gracefully. Throughout her life, she’ll have plenty of opportunity to practice being gracious as a winner and as one who comes in second, third, or last place. The sooner you can help her develop a good response to life’s disappointments, the better off she’ll be.

Tell her something like: “I know you’re disappointed in not getting the part you wanted. It’s okay to be sad about that. Lots of actors start out in the chorus, and it’s a good place to learn about being in the theater. It’s up to you to decide how you’re going to handle this: you can mope about it and skip the chorus, or you can put it behind you and focus on being the best chorus girl you can be and have fun. The choice is yours.”

Then don’t bring it up again. Let her figure out how she wants to handle the situation. Endless talking about it will only make her feel worse. If she brings it up again and wants to talk about how sad she is, tell her that the topic is closed. That’s not being mean, that’s helping her to move on and focus on living, not what happened in the past. A good lesson for us all.

The Victory of Failure

What do I mean by the title of this blog, that failure can be a victory? Simply this: Children need to experience pain and discomfort in order to properly negotiate life.

Often, parents try to minimize the amount of pain and frustration in their children’s lives because it makes kids unhappy. But children who don’t learn how to handle pain and disappointment are the ones who grow up to become young adults who often fail to launch after college (or who drop out of college without finishing their degree) because they don’t know how to handle failure.

I recently read How Children Succeed by Paul Tough, who explored why some kids excel and others don’t. Part of the reason boils down to character. Those children who overcome obstacles are not always the ones who are the smartest, or even come from a stable home. It’s the kids who develop character—those are the ones who succeed at life.

In talking about his own parenting of a young son, Tough said that “the long struggle we will face, as all parents do, between our urge to provide everything for our child, to protect him from all harm, and our knowledge that if we really want him to succeed, we need to first let him fail. Or, more precisely, we need to help him learn to manage failure.”

How do we let our children fail? Here are few ways we can take that step back and let the child sink or swim on his own.

1. Stop helping with homework. Instead of hovering around your child while he does his homework, ignore him. If he asks for help, ask him to struggle on for a bit more on his own. Most of the time, the child just wants an easy way to solve a difficult problem. By letting your child own his homework, then you set him up for success or failure on his own, thus building self confidence as well as how to handle not doing well.
2. Let her get the grades her work deserves. So many times, we want our children to succeed academically at all costs, even to the point of asking teachers what extra curricular work the child can do to improve the grade. We tell our children’s teachers that we expect them to get the grades they earn—and we’re prepared to enforce that even when they get to high school.
3. Take a step back. If you see your child struggling with something, don’t jump in right away. Step back and let the child figure out if he can tie his shoes, ride his bike without training wheels or whatever else is the trouble. Sure, the kid will likely fall off the bike more times than he stays on in the beginning, but by not rushing in to help each time he experiences frustration at his lack of ability, you’ll help him learn to succeed on his own.
4. Share your own failures. When your kids see how you handle life’s disappointments, they learn how they can, too. I recently had a novel rejected by an agent, a nice rejection, but a “no” all the same. I shared the news with my family at dinner one evening, and while the children could see I was disappointed, they also saw that I wasn’t crushed beyond hope. In talking about my own failure, I helped them see how they can process their own failures.

 These are only a few ways to help children learn to succeed—by first learning how to fail.

Until next time,

Sarah