{"id":102,"date":"2008-12-01T14:22:23","date_gmt":"2008-12-01T21:22:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/theagingofaquarius.com\/ag_blog\/?p=102"},"modified":"2008-12-01T17:03:20","modified_gmt":"2008-12-02T00:03:20","slug":"should-we-teach-kids-about-failure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theagingofaquarius.com\/ag_blog\/should-we-teach-kids-about-failure\/","title":{"rendered":"Should We Teach Kids About Failure?"},"content":{"rendered":"

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We\u2019re willing to do just about anything to prepare our children to be successful adults.\u00a0 <\/span>We encourage, cajole, spend,\u00a0discipline and then spend some more, yet the one thing we can\u2019t buy is a guarantee that any of it will contribute to their eventual well-being when they leave our care.<\/span><\/h2>\n

In the past few decades, there\u2019s been a shift to a completely child-centric way of life. The\u00a0self-esteem movement now pretty much dominates child raising.\u00a0There\u2019s a whole vocabulary to support it.\u00a0 <\/span><\/h2>\n

When my granddaughter and I go out, she picks up something and hands it to the person who dropped it.\u00a0 <\/span>A young mother passing by says \u201cGood helping.\u201d I reach for the little one\u2019s hand to cross a street. She wants to walk alone.\u00a0 <\/span>I firm up the tone in my voice\u00a0and insist. She reluctantly takes my hand and a nearby adult says to her, \u201cGood listening.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/h2>\n

This language came along after my daughter was raised.\u00a0 It\u2019s specific wording that\u00a0evidently everyone agrees to use with children.\u00a0I like it fine.\u00a0 <\/span>It\u2019s nice and friendly, but I’m thinking there’s a step that could \u00a0<\/span>follow, after the praise.\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span><\/span>We congratulate children for everything.\u00a0 <\/span>We give them prizes. We celebrate their progress in all areas. This works with some and backfires with others – kids who aren’t motivated without a tangible incentive, who believe they are so special that they have no grounding in the real world, where they will encounter\u00a0other kids who feel even more entitled.\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span><\/span>Does our attempt to cushion them lead some to\u00a0believe the outside world will be like home?\u00a0\u00a0I wonder if the constant polishing of self-esteem\u00a0has gone a bit too far.\u00a0\u00a0We can\u2019t keep our kids from stumbling,\u00a0from pain, from self-doubt, just as no one could have kept it from us. We want them to have everything, including the undeniable joys of self-expression.\u00a0 <\/span>But we may be waiting too long to tell them about the forces in the world that seem to exist just to puncture balloons. <\/span>Should we talk to them about the possibility of failure?\u00a0 I mean an individual failure, not an overall giving up.\u00a0 Would it be wise to ladle in\u00a0a bigger dose of reality earlier in their lives, even if\u00a0it hurts us more than it hurts them? There must be a way to mix into our child-raising concepts the idea that a failure is not the end, that keeping on keeping on is sometimes as important as starting out in the first place.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

I have mixed feelings about telling kids they can do anything. On the one hand, we want to them be courageous and take leaps of faith.\u00a0 On the other hand, it\u2019s simply not true.\u00a0\u00a0Not all of us are great at everything we\u2019d like to do. <\/span><\/p>\n

We don’t spend much time preparing our kids to handle disappointment.\u00a0 Maybe\u00a0we could think about introducing them to the notion\u00a0of postponing certain dreams and pursuing a more practical course, one that will help guarantee their survival. <\/span><\/p>\n

Where\u2019s the balance?\u00a0\u00a0I don\u2019t know.\u00a0 That\u2019s why I\u2019m asking.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00d3<\/span><\/span> Anita Garner 2008<\/span><\/p>\n

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We\u2019re willing to do just about anything to prepare our children to be successful adults.\u00a0 We encourage, cajole, spend,\u00a0discipline and then spend some more, yet the one thing we can\u2019t buy is a guarantee that any of it will contribute to their eventual well-being when they leave our care. In the past few decades, there\u2019s … Continue reading “Should We Teach Kids About Failure?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[246,229,233,245,243,230,244],"class_list":["post-102","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-disappointment","tag-entitled-kids","tag-failure","tag-positive-reinforcement","tag-reality","tag-self-esteem","tag-success"],"yoast_head":"\nShould We Teach Kids About Failure? – Anita Garner | The Aging of Aquarius<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/theagingofaquarius.com\/ag_blog\/should-we-teach-kids-about-failure\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Should We Teach Kids About Failure? – Anita Garner | The Aging of Aquarius\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"We\u2019re willing to do just about anything to prepare our children to be successful adults.\u00a0 We encourage, cajole, spend,\u00a0discipline and then spend some more, yet the one thing we can\u2019t buy is a guarantee that any of it will contribute to their eventual well-being when they leave our care. 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