Let Kids Know That Failure Is a Normal Part of Life
Let Kids Know That Failure Is a Normal Part of Life
by Livia McCoy
As parents, we want to protect our children from failure. What we don’t realize is that failure is an important part of life. If children do not experience failure, they may not learn to struggle through to success. Think about when you watched your child learn to walk. If every time they fell down you rescued them, they may have taken much longer to learn to walk on their own. On the other hand, there were times when they may have needed encouragement from you to keep trying.
The students I teach are dyslexic. This means they have a specific language learning difficulty that affects them in many ways. They often experience school failure before coming to our school. More than once I have heard my students say they feel their strength is that they know how to fail, sometimes over and over again, and not get too discouraged. To get to this point, however, takes support from parents, friends, and teachers.
When your child fails (such as getting a low grade on a test or project they thought was really good), you can help them to learn resilience—to bounce back and keep trying until they finally succeed. Here are some suggestions for what you might do.
Ask them to help you figure out exactly what went wrong. It is important to identify what caused the failure. Was
As parents, we want to protect our children from failure. What we don’t realize is that failure is an important part of life. If children do not experience failure, they may not learn to struggle through to success. Think about when you watched your child learn to walk. If every time they fell down you rescued them, they may have taken much longer to learn to walk on their own. On the other hand, there were times when they may have needed encouragement from you to keep trying.
The students I teach are dyslexic. This means they have a specific language learning difficulty that affects them in many ways. They often experience school failure before coming to our school. More than once I have heard my students say they feel their strength is that they know how to fail, sometimes over and over again, and not get too discouraged. To get to this point, however, takes support from parents, friends, and teachers.
When your child fails (such as getting a low grade on a test or project they thought was really good), you can help them to learn resilience—to bounce back and keep trying until they finally succeed. Here are some suggestions for what you might do.
Ask them to help you figure out exactly what went wrong. It is important to identify what caused the failure. Was