Do you think it is important to teach kids that it is okay to sometimes fail, and that failure can sometimes be a good option? I’ve read that if kids are always pressured to succeed that they will be more hesitant about trying new things where they are not sure about how will they will do, and so it’s important for kids to be able to try new things without always feeling like they have to succeed at everything. What is a good age for teaching children about failure and what is a good way to introduce this concept?
Also, how do you teach children to know the difference between really pushing past their limits to get something and when it’s time to quit?
Its never to early to teach about failure. We all go through failure as soon as we’re born. From starting to crawl, to repeatingly trying to take those first steps. Its our jobs as parents to be there for our children when they do fail and to let them know that they can do something.
To me failure is never an option. But then again I’m a parent to a child with special needs so that feeling is deepened more into our family structure probably more so than a family with healthy children.
I’ve yet to really seen in life where failure is an option. We need to strive to let our children know that they can do great things and if they work hard enough they can achieve it. If we teach them to fail then it does become an option , then they begin to fail themselves.
I know with my youngest we’ve been through some pretty tough times when it came to her health. There were many times where I just wanted to give up and throw in the towel. But I couldn’t, and I still can’t.
Our children will fail , we’re not perfect , only God is. But we can teach them when it does happen they need to get up and keep moving on. We need to teach them that in the tough times we need to turn to our faith and keep moving on and never let failure be an option in life.
As for pushing children, well there is a difference. If your pushing them and they aren’t enjoying it then that is a problem on the parents part. Not the child’s. But if the child likes to be challenged , enjoys it , and the parent knows when to stop before they know they want to stop. Then ‘pushing’ in that matter is a good thing.
Thankyou for the inspiration jwp I just did a blog on this. Your post had reminded me that I had recently had my own moment of letting go as a parent and letting my DD fail and learn from her own mistakes and guess what I didn’t fall apart when it happened. I think letting kids ‘fail’ is also a big letting go and trusting your child exercise for the parents. Here is the link to my blog Intellikids! Early Learning Down Under: Letting our children fail or learning to let go
Failure is a GIFT! Unless you don’t treat it as such.
Many of the most touching and incredible stories have come after failure upon failure, and many successes would not have happened without having had failures first.
That’s why a key message I always try to drum into Felicity is that what’s important is not whether she succeeds or not, but whether she has tried her best. She recently entered a poem recital contest where she didn’t win any prize, and I told her I was so proud and impressed by her performance cos I thought she did really well - and in fact, even better than another performance where she had won first place. I told her I was happier about the ‘failure’ performance than the winning one because she had improved in certain performance skills.