Why failure is important
When your child fails they need to figure out what they did wrong,
learn how to change their behaviour
to get it right next time,
and manage the negative emotions
that come along with these challenging cognitive tasks.
Repeated failure
might also teach your child that they can't always get what they want,
helping to build realistic expectations and self-assessment.
When we "protect" children from failure,
we prevent them from learning how to master important life skills.
We are then amazed to find that we reap
what we sow:
typically in the form of a risk-adverse,
psychologically fragile,
socially awkward teenager,
untrained to deal with even
the most basic life challenges.
