Kids Learn Better When Parents React Positively to Failures
Failure is a part of life and we should be ready to accept it. However, in the increasing love to win the “rat race” people are becoming more stressed about success. What is this success? Can be it be explained without the journey of failures? Thomas Edison said, “I failed my way to success.” Success is a story of failures and this is what we learn from the most learned and most successful people in our history. Failure is a stepping stone towards success and this fundamental thought needs to be sowed in the young minds to prepare them for the real world!
How a child sees failure and success depends upon the attitude of the parents. What you teach your child at home and how you behave when they fail in something, decides how they behave in case of a failure. For instance, if your child fails in math how best you can deal with it? It has been seen that even the concerned parents would say, “It is ok, at least you tried.” But do you know what that implies to their vulnerable minds? They interpret it as you mean to say that their tried attempts lead to failure.
Therefore, you should instead ask the child what they learnt from the whole exercise. You should ask them if taking help from a teacher/another adult could be beneficial. Or how do they think they can improve in the next exam? It is imperative for the parents to teach their kids the importance of failures and more than that the acceptance of failures. So if they fail you need to teach them to value failures and not just accept them.
The parents need to make failures constructive for their child. So what can you do as a parent do for the same? You can start by emphasizing more on the journey of learning. You have to teach your child that failure is just a part of the learning process. All the more, failure is indispensable part of learning. How would have Thomas Edison achieved his fame and reputation if he had feared failure? So you should make them take the whole process of learning more seriously and accept the results as it whatever they may be.
When a child is given such a constructive response to failure, the fear of failure will start fading away. They won’t be scared of trying something new, thinking out of the box, and going beyond the conventional. And this would be your biggest contribution, as a parent, towards the mental development of your child.
