We Must Allow Our Children to Fail
Our job as coaches and parents is to prevent traumatic head injuries or that possibly badly broken limb but at the same time we must allow for skinned knees and scraped palms.
If we protect them from everything we do not prepare them for anything.
I am not one of those parents who laments the downfall of society because we do not spank our kids and make them learn cursive writing. The norms of society changes with each generation. I look back at what was an acceptable coaching practice when I first started coaching and I wonder, “what were we thinking?”. Common practices in the gym today will be looked at with scorn in a decade.
The only constant in life is change.
and failure.
If it wasn’t for failure we would never learn. I do not think we should set our children or our gymnasts up for failure. But we have to let kids figure somethings out themselves.
The recent college admissions scandal may seem like an extreme case that only pertains to wealthy elites with the means to bribe people to get their children into top universities. But it touches on the pressured feelings almost all parents and students feel today. It also highlights the way many parents are cheating their kids out of an important life lesson: how to fail and bounce back. This is not a parent networking and calling a friend or colleague to give a child a second look. This isn’t a parent paying for a tutor or SAT prep courses. This is parents bribing their child’s way into a school. *
Where does it end? Will a parent bribe their child’s way into their first job? Into public office? This is the natural destination for a generation of children who have never been allowed to fail or even struggle. Not in schools, not in sports, not on the playground. The current attitude is that a child is successful based on their talent. If they struggle it is not because they are not as talented- it is because the system is rigged or that a teacher or coach didn’t do their job. **
The concept of “helicopter parents” who hover over all aspects of their kids’ lives has been around for a while, but over the past year, there have been more headlines about “lawn mower parents,” who mow down every obstacle or difficulty their children may have to face.
It’s natural for parents to want to protect their children from disappointment, but doing so can ultimately lower their self-esteem and set them up for more difficulty in the future.
As coaches and parents we have to give the children the information they need. Do not hold anything back. Allow them to make some decisions and accept the consequences.
The Importance Of Failure
In an interview with Huffington Post, Kim Metcalfe, a retired professor of early childhood education and psychology and author of Let’s Build ExtraOrdinary Youth Together said, “Parents who give permission for kids to fail are building social and emotional skills and qualities that last a lifetime ― persistence, positive self-image, self-confidence, self-control, problem-solving, self-sufficiency, focus and patience,” But allowing your child to fail almost seems to go against nature, noted Jessica Lahey, a teacher, journalist and author of The Gift of Failure: How the Best Parents Learn to Let Go So Their Children Can Succeed.
She said that parents feel bombarded by frightening headlines along the lines of “it’s impossible to get into college today” or “the next generation of kids is unlikely to do better economically than their parents.”
“When faced with those sorts of scary scenarios, we tend to go into ‘protective parent mode,’ which is evolutionarily rational,” Lahey explained. “But we’re reacting to things that aren’t actually threats. It’s not a threat that our child can’t get into Harvard. It’s not a threat that our kid is not the top-scoring player on the soccer team. It’s something that’s beneficial for them to have to experience.”
Because parents have the instinct to protect their children from failure and disappointment, it’s necessary to take a step back and understand what real threats are versus what’s actually just part of growing up.
“Failure is part of life, and if our children don’t have the opportunity to fail or make mistakes, they’ll never realize they can bounce back. That’s what resilience is all about,” said Michele Borba, an educational psychologist and author of UnSelfie: Why Empathetic Kids Succeed in Our All-About-Me World. “Your child doesn’t learn to bounce back because you told them they could but because they experienced it. Then when the problems get really huge, they’ve got that gumption inside to realize, ‘Hey I can do this!’”
One of the best ways to help a child build his or her sense of self-esteem is to separate your own self-worth as a parent from your children’s accomplishments.
Teach Failure And Resilience Every Day
The Power Of Brainstorming
Borba recommends making brainstorming part of kids’ day-to-day experience to help them practice coming up with solutions to problems.
“When your child makes a mistake, don’t berate the child for the mistake but make it into a question of ‘What are you going to learn from it?’ ‘What’s one way you could do that differently?’ or ‘OK, let’s figure out what to do next,’”
Kids Need To See Their Parents Struggle
Sharing stories of past failures and how you moved on can be beneficial for your children, but what’s even more helpful is keeping your kids in the loop as you face adversity in the present.
Life is not perfect. We all struggle. That is normal. We need to teach our children how to get through adversity. When to try it alone and when to seek help.
*when a parent donated a few million so the school can build a lab, a building or fund a scholarship and then their child gets in, at least others can enjoy the product of their legal bribe.
** I do believe for some that the system is rigged and not necessarily fair. A non political non socio economic example would be baseball. I live in the North East of the USA. An area that sees 4-5 months of cold/snow where playing outside is severely limited. A thousand miles to the south playing baseball year round is possible. A prospective baseball player living there has more time to play the game. More time for organized or unorganized practice time, more time to perfect basic elements. (conversely there are not a lot of down hill skiers from Florida).
After writing this yesterday I came across an article in INC Magazine. WANT TO RAISE SUCCESSFUL YOUNG ADULTS? STOP LAWNMOWER PARENTING.
