Just because someone fails, it does not make him a failure. Teach your children to acknowledge all of the success and knowledge they gain from failure. If they learn from it, they have valuable experience, and that is a small success in itself.
One rarely learns how to do something on his first try. In fact, some things take years or even a lifetime to accomplish. But your children will never succeed if they give up. A failure should not be the end of the road, but one checkmark in the list of things to do before reaching success, which is the very last step. If you teach your children to think of their failed attempts as progress instead of failures, they will build the self-esteem needed to persevere in their goals.
Thomas Edison said, “I am not discouraged, because every wrong attempt discarded is just one more step forward.” Of his failed attempts at the light bulb, he said, “They taught something that I didn’t know. They taught me what direction to move in.” For Edison, failures were just learning experiences. Teach your children not to look at failures as roadblocks, but rather as signposts. They don’t block your way to success; they just show you which way to go to reach it.
If you teach your children at a young age to persist even when they feel like they will fail, you are setting them up for a life of success. If they don’t try, it’s true they won’t fail, but they also won’t succeed. We only get one life. If we spend it being afraid of failure we will never reach our full potential.
Everyone has heard the age-old adage, “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.” It may be cliché, but it rings with truth. Think about experiences you’ve had in life where this is true. Maybe you didn’t get the first job you applied for, or maybe you struggled with a certain subject in school. If you didn’t keep trying, you never would have gotten a job or passed your classes. Sharing these personal experiences with your children when they experience failure can help them realize that failure is something everyone experiences at one time or another; it is simply a part of life.
Dealing with failure is all about having the right attitude. It might even help your child to avoid using the word failure altogether. We don’t fail, we just find alternate routes to success. If your child fails a test in school, it’s an indication that he needs to change something about the way he approaches the material. Maybe he needs to pay more attention in class, change his study habits, or get a tutor. Just because he gets a bad grade in math doesn’t mean he’ll never succeed at it; it just means he needs to change the way he goes about achieving that success.
The worst thing any of us can do is give up. Giving up is far worse than failure. At least if you fail, you can say you tried. You can find another way to succeed, even if that means many more failed attempts. If you never try, you never know what you are capable of. You end up with a life of “what ifs”: “What if I had applied to college?” “What if I had taken that job?” “What if I had tried out for the basketball team?” You don’t want that kind of life for your child. You want them to look back on a life that yes, may have been full of small failures, but has also been full of valuable experiences that lead to success.
This article is written by Solomon Brenner Author of Black Belt Parenting and Master instructor for Action Karate. For more information comment here, call 1-888-99-SHARK(74275), or email us actionkarate@comcast.net
