How to Teach Kids to Learn from Failure

Is there any parent in this world who would like to see their children fail?

No.

We all want to see them happy and successful.

But failure is part of the life journey, and sometimes it’s the exact thing that leads to success. If Steve Jobs hadn’t quit college, he would probably take on a different track and the world would be different today. He faced other failures, too. But he always learned something from them.

Our children will inevitably fail at one point or another. They will play in a soccer match and they will lose. They will enter a spelling competition and they won’t win.

Parents should always keep that in mind, so they could start teaching kids how to learn from failure early on in their lives. 

How to Teach Kids to Learn from Failure

Of course, you’re not going to teach your kids to fail so that they could learn from that experience. You’ll just prepare them to face such situations in life with strength and perseverance.

Children are subjectable to the examples you set and the words you say. When you transform failure into a learning experience, you’re teaching kids a valuable life lesson.

Let’s see how you can do that.

1. Teach Your Child to Overcome Negative Emotions

What if your kid gets a bad grade or loses in a game? They will feel negative emotions. They will be angry. They might feel less of themselves. They might start blaming other people for their failure. Your role as a parent is important in this situation.

Ask your child: how do you feel? Teach them to express feelings with simple words, such as sad, angry, disappointed, nervous, sad, or mad. With this, they learn how to express emotions in an acceptable way.

Support your kid. Help them work through these feelings. You’re the one who should comfort them. Explain that it’s not possible to succeed in everything in life. Failure is part of the process, and we should just get up and proceed where we left things.

Instead of being angry about low grades, you should be teaching kids how to improve them. Your disapproval would only trigger more negative emotions. 

2. Play Games

Games are the perfect tool to help your kid learn from failure. When they start playing a new game, they fail pretty soon. They aren’t used to the rules and they don’t know what to expect from the first level. But they try again, and they fail again. They try again. With each attempt, they are getting better.

This is a great lesson that they can translate to anything else in life.

When they start writing essays, they won’t be brilliant on the first attempt. Remind them of the games they love. They learn by trying harder.

3. Teach Them to Develop Flexible Plans

We tend to fail when we face overwhelming projects. We don’t know how to handle them. Students are afraid of essay assignments, so they procrastinate until the last minute. They convince themselves that they aren’t good enough, so they undermine their own success.

Planning helps kids to overcome the tendency to procrastinate. With that, it prevents failure. But even if a failure occurs, the lesson they learn from failure is clear: they should plan better next time.

You can inspire your kid to love planning by using a fun app.

Setapp is a great service that lets you install premium apps on your computer for an affordable monthly subscription. You’ll find planning apps in the Lifestyle category. Some of the options include NotePlan, WaitingList, Time Out, and Diarly.

Winning Isn’t the Most Important Thing!

That’s the most important lesson we should be teaching kids. It’s not possible to win at everything. And that’s okay. Parents should praise not the win, but the effort. With enough effort, many things in life can be accomplished. If your kid doesn’t accomplish what they want this time, you should applaud the effort and encourage them to continue with it. When they know how to learn from failure, they will succeed in life.

Author: Bio:
James Dorian is a technical copywriter. He is a tech geek who knows a lot about modern apps that will make your work more productive. James reads tons of online blogs on technology, business, and ways to become a real pro in our modern world of innovations.