As parents, it’s our natural instinct to want to protect our kids. We coach them towards success and help them be the champions of their own lives. When they fail or are hurt, we hurt along with them. We know what failure feels like, so often we want to protect them at all costs.
But what we don’t realize is that failure is a necessary part of growth and development, and that true growth and development can’t happen without it.
Reframing Failure
Many people look at failure as an unsuccessful ending. But the truth is that failure is a normal part of most people’s journey to success. And here’s a question to ponder: Would we rather raise young people who are willing to try new things, risk failure and learn from it, or who are too afraid to try, so they remain frozen with anxiety?
Let’s think about it this way:
– How many babies learn to walk without falling?
– How many kids learn to ride a bike without tipping over?
– How many of us wrote an essay without first writing a draft?
That’s what failure is. A first draft that we can learn from, improve on, and try again… as many times as necessary.
Our Role as Parents
This is where we as parents come in. We must encourage attempts, even if we think they could fail. We must celebrate effort, not just success. This has to start with the small things, like riding a bike or baking a cake, so that when they get to the bigger, higher stakes things, like going to a job interview or auditioning for a role in the school play, they have the experience of trying something and being okay with the outcome.
Their whole childhood, and even more importantly in adolescence, is a series of failures until they succeed. That’s literally what practice is. And it’s one of the most important life lessons they can learn.
The Gap Between Theory and Practice
Many teens in our current day and age have a lot of theoretical knowledge because they’ve seen things online. But until they’ve actually done these things themselves, that’s all it is: theoretical. And this can be even more anxiety-producing. Because they can picture in their head how something should be done, but haven’t actually done it.
So the best gift we can give our kids to reduce their anxiety is hands-on opportunities that they can and will fail at. It’s okay for them to fail and fail again. Until they don’t anymore.
Embracing the Growth Mindset
Remember, “The opposite of success isn’t failure, it’s growth/learning. When you look at the world this way, there is no such thing as failure, only growth. Either you succeeded, and you grow, or you don’t succeed and you learn important lessons that will help you the next time around. Building confidence, every time we don’t succeed, we learn.”
By embracing this mindset and encouraging our teens to do the same, we’re not just preparing them for success – we’re equipping them with the resilience and confidence to face life’s challenges head-on.
So let’s encourage our teens to try, to fail, to learn, and to grow. It might be uncomfortable at times, but it’s the surest path to raising confident, resilient adults who are ready to take on the world.