Parenting – what failure means to kids

Yesterday I started talking about the role parents play in creating the best possible future for their kids. I looked at the kinds of conversations we have in front of our kids, and the information we provide to them.

Today I want to look at failure, and what we teach children about failure.

The first thing that we need to do is be clear about failure ourselves. Most people think that failure is the end of the road. When you fail, you are a disgrace to your family, friends and society in general. For most failure is similar to death! This is the furthest is can be from the truth.

There should not be such a word as failure in my mind. Most of the times we take action and expect a specific output. When that output is not what we expected we see it as a failure. It is only not what we expected, and that is all. The output that we get is an opportunity for us to learn, an opportunity to change our actions to create the outcome we want.

Most of us know the movie “Rocky”. Did you know that Sylvester Stallone wrote the script for that movie? And that most of the movie directors were happy to make the movie, but not with him in the lead role? Well, he had only one outcome in his mind – he will play the lead role. It took more than a few hundred meetings before someone agreed to cast him as the lead. What would have happened if he just gave up – if he saw all those “NOs” as a personal failure of himself? No movie? No Sylvester Stallone? He was not the failure – the people that he met with did not want to agree to his terms – he did not get the outcome he expected, so he kept on working on his dream until he got the required outcome. That first garage sale that our kids attempt: if they do not get the results they expected, how do we approach that conversation with them? 

What do we teach our kids? If they do not pass that exam they will be failures? They will be a disgrace to their family and friends?

Why is it that most kids dread exam time? Where do they get that fear from?  Go forward a few years. How many young adults accept the challenge of building a great future for themselves? Do they open their own companies and work for themselves, or do they hide behind the idea that it might be a failure and therefore they never try? They need to understand the possible outcomes based on the actions they take – but that is all it is: different outcomes for different actions. And when they are not satisfied with the outcome, then they can change the action.

My Story: I was told that if I do not perform at school it will impact on my Dad’s career. Can you imagine what a burden it is for a kid to carry? If I fail, not only am I a disgrace, but my dad will be a disgrace in front of all the people he works with. Was that the truth? Most probably not – but an “innocent” lie on a parent’s side to get his kid to be a top performer can have a huge impact.

What lies do we tell our kids to get them to take certain actions? Would the truth not be better? Should we not tell them what it is that we expect from them, and why? They are intelligent enough to connect those dots.

There are no failures, it is called challenges – and these challenges provide us with opportunities to learn from.

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