Here's Why You Must Teach Your Kids It's Okay to Fail

We need to change our mindsets about failure - look at it as an opportunity from which to always learn and grow!

Here's Why You Must Teach Your Kids It's Okay to Fail
It's good for them.
MANDIE SHEAN, THE CONVERSATION
10 JUL 2018

In recent years, there has been a concerted effort to protect children from failure in order to safeguard their fragile self-esteem. This seems logical – failure is unpleasant.

While this is logical, it actually has the opposite effect. Children and adolescents in Australia appear less able to cope than ever before.

When we fail, we experience negative emotions such as disappointment or frustration. When children are protected from these feelings they can believe they are powerless and have no control over mastery.

The answer is not to avoid failure, but to learn how to cope with small failures. These low-level challenges have been called "steeling events".

If failure is held as a sign of incompetence and something that should be avoided (rather than a normal thing), children will start to avoid the challenges necessary for learning.

Failure is only a gift if students see it as an opportunity rather than a threat.

There's a lot more at the article above, click to read more!