4 Ways Failure Can Benefit Your Child
Failure is not only a part of life, it’s necessary. The next time your child faces one of life’s struggles, don’t fret—instead embrace it.
Cheryl Butler
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4 Ways Failure Can Benefit Your Child
During the 25 years that I’ve been raising my kids, I’ve seen a range of academic-, sport-, social-, work-, and peer-related successes, wins, personal bests, and victories (big and small). I’ve also seen awkward mishaps, school struggles, social catastrophes, and everything in between.
Watching your children grow up is an amazing journey with plenty of highs and lows. It’s always exciting to see them hitting new milestones and thriving. Of course, that’s when all is going well. It’s a different story when your child hits a roadblock and you watch him fall flat on his face.
Naturally, no parent wants to see their child have setbacks. But quite frankly, failure is not only a part of life, it’s necessary. The next time your child faces one of life’s struggles, don’t fret—instead, embrace it. Mighty Mommy shares four ways that failure can benefit your child and even leave you as the parent feeling stronger.
Four Ways Failure Helps Your Child
- Learn From Their Mistakes
- Helps Handle Life’s Setbacks
- Encourages Growth
- Keeps You Focused On Your Goals
We’ll explore each in more detail.
1. Learn From Their Mistakes
Raising as large a family as mine certainly has had its challenges, but it has also afforded me a big advantage: the ability to step back and let my kids do for themselves. I’ve been outnumbered for most of my parenting years, so I’ve had to rely on my gut instincts and I’ve had to trust in my children’s abilities to make their own choices, even when I wasn’t totally on board.
This includes things like their choice of friendships, how they’ve managed homework assignments, not studying for major exams, and making poor choices with their hard earned money ($200 sneakers that were outgrown in a month).
Each of these scenarios yielded a different outcome for my kids, and although some of the scenarios ended in full-blown meltdowns—for instance, flunking the Spanish II midterm because watching the final weeks of “The Voice” was apparently far more important than studying—the bottom line was that they had to learn to own their own decisions—good or bad—and continue moving forward.
In Psychology Today’s How Allowing Children to Fail Helps Them Succeed, columnist Susan Newman Ph.D. makes a very astute statement about how today’s parent is trying to raise superstar kids, which often results in the rigid role of being a helicopter parent. This term bluntly refers to a parent who hovers continuously over the child from the moment he sets foot out of bed each day until even after he heads off to college. Sure, it’s normal to want to protect our kids from harm, but they need to be allowed to exert their independence, even as toddlers. Keeping them at arm’s length in a bubble will never give them the opportunity to spread their wings and soar.
Experiences are truly the best teacher, and when we allow our kids the chance to make their own mistakes we gift them with the wonderful opportunity to learn and grow.
See Also: How to Stop Helicopter Parenting
2. Helps You Handle Life’s Setbacks
One of my favorite mantras has always been: “When life hands you lemons, make lemonade.” I think the saying resonates with me so well because of the way I was raised. As the oldest of five children (all close in age) I earned myself a leadership role without even trying. I was mature by nature and didn’t shy away from a challenge, probably because I had more responsibility than most kids my age.
Our kids face all kinds of setbacks on a regular basis. Whether it be they don’t get placed on the soccer team with all their friends and instead are with kids they hardly know, or they have a boss at their very first job who berates them for not being fast enough processing orders in the drive-thru window—if we allow them to experience these downers, they will figure out how to adapt and build a stronger backbone.
I love bestselling author J.K. Rowling’s Harvard commencement speech about how her life’s challenges were what helped her write the Harry Potter stories. She recounted how disapproving parents, a devastating divorce, virtual poverty, and repeated rejections gave her insight into what it takes to overcome life’s biggest obstacles. “Life is difficult and complicated and beyond anyone’s total control. Rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life,” she told the audience.
Another well-known example of how failure can be a powerful driving force is the story of legendary NBA player Michael Jordan’s rise. He tried out for the varsity basketball team in high school and wasn’t chosen. He was devastated and almost gave up the game completely, but his mother convinced him to take advantage of not making varsity and instead work like crazy to improve his game. He did just that and let failure fuel the passion for becoming the best basketball player he could possibly be. And the rest is history!
When our kids know that famous authors and athletes have built successful lives after facing adversity, it can help them realize that it’s OK and totally possible to fail at something and then move on to success. It helps build character and better decision making skills. The year my son was placed on a soccer team without having a single friend in his midst was one of the best things that ever happened to him. He didn’t have buddies to hang out and goof around with so instead he focused on improving his own game. Eventually he became friends with boys from the other town, and at the same time he built up a lot of self-confidence because he learned how to stand out alone. He went on to play on competitive travel teams and earn a varsity spot as a freshman.
3. Failure Encourages Growth
Most families with more than one child will easily tell you how different their kids are. Personality traits, academic skills, athleticism, and overall confidence can be so diverse in a sibling group that parents often wonder how their own flesh and blood can possibly be related. I know that’s the case with my eight kids.
I have a complete range of stellar students, high-achievers, top athletes as well as fun-loving daydreamers, creative types that have no clue how the game of football is played, and humanitarians that want to save the world and could care less what kind of car they drive. (Totally refreshing!)
As a parent I am completely passionate about my kids’ successes. As I’ve shared in the past, three of my children were diagnosed with significant speech delays and therefore had to overcome pretty big obstacles in simple communication, obstacles that the majority of kids will never have to face.
At the beginning of their journey in learning to speak, I admit, I was feeling a bit sorry for myself. After overcoming five years of infertility, I couldn’t believe I would now have to struggle with my kids’ severe learning disabilities. Thankfully, my husband was of the mindset that this was a gift, and our kids would overcome these setbacks if we remained positive and encouraged them. Was he ever right!
This was one of the most inspiring times of my parenting life. We surrounded ourselves with terrific speech and occupational therapists and dove right in. The best part was learning that our challenged kids were far more resilient than we had ever realized. Because they couldn’t communicate verbally, they had to rely on other means of expressing themselves and getting their needs met. I believe this is what changed the parenting mindset that I had to do as much for my kids as I thought I did. Watching my three language-delayed kids make decisions and take risks because it was all they knew helped me become a much better parent—one who trusted that my kids’ instincts would guide them and when a situation didn’t work out, they would rally and learn from it.
Indeed, failure will help a person grow, and when our kids are given that chance early on, it will help build a solid foundation for them to thrive when life throws them those unexpected curve balls.
4. Failure Keeps You Focused On Your Goals
Goal setting has long been suggested by top motivational gurus to keep a person on task. In my episode 4 Lifelong Skills for Your Child’s Success, I delve into the important benefits of goal setting. Personally, I’ve always been a strong believer in goal setting because it keeps me organized and moving forward. Whenever I get off track, I pick up my journal of written goals and re-read them to stay motivated.
Goal setting, however, is also a wonderful tool to offset the frustration and disappointment associated with failure. Writing for Forbes, Caroline Beaton encourages readers to stay the course after failure even though it’s natural to want to throw in the towel and give up. Instead, set specific goals to keep you moving forward and in the process, celebrate even the small victories. “Recognizing your progress, however small, does two things: first, it extends the enjoyment of our achievement and, secondly, it increases our motivation. Our brains accelerate as we perceive success to be closer; rats run faster at the end of the maze, and marathoners speed up after 26.1 miles in ‘the X-spot.'”
One of my children graduated from college with an Associates Degree in graphic design (one of my language-delayed children, in fact). It was her goal to finish with her Bachelor’s degree but due to personal reasons, she decided to take a different path in pursuing her degree. She’s worked in both retail and marketing for the past few years but has become increasingly discouraged with her career path. After working with a progressive company for a couple years in a role she thought had potential, she was let go and told she wasn’t the right fit for their company’s future.
Totally taken aback and completely crushed, she admittedly wallowed for a few days, but then she took the bull by the horns and made the decision to go back to college and finish what she started. She was recently accepted to a top-notch college where she will get her Bachelor’s degree and in the process, she landed a fantastic part-time position with a publishing company who loved her creative ideas and zest for whimsy! Now she is experiencing the best of both worlds, and she credits this to never giving up on her goals.
Failure, like change, is inevitable—it’s just a fact of life. By guiding our kids with skills such as goal setting we can help put them back in the driver’s seat so they can take control of future disappointments and stay focused on whatever goals and dreams that are really important to them.
How do you help your kids rally after failure? Share your thoughts in the comment section at quickanddirtytips.com/mighty-mommy or post your ideas on the Mighty Mommy Facebook page. You can also connect with me on Twitter @MightyMommy or e-mail me at mommy@quickanddirtytips.comcreate new email. Visit my family-friendly boards at Pinterest.com/MightyMommyQDT. Image of girl who fell off her bike © Shutterstock.
About the Author
Cheryl L. Butler was the host of the Mighty Mommy podcast for nine years from 2012 to 2021. She is the mother of eight children. Her experiences with infertility, adoption, seven pregnancies, and raising children with developmental delays have helped her become a resource on the joys and challenges of parenting. You can reach her by email.