Fail, Parents, Fail

Fail, Parents, Fail

Failure is a huge thing for kids...and for everyone, for that matter.  It sucks in the moment, but those lessons

In the moment...it sucks.

are the ones that help us build strength, resiliency, and capacity.  We, as modern parents, are tending to shelter and shield our children from failure, or perhaps from the consequences of failure, more now than ever before.  Our kids have a couple of "dangerous playgrounds" that they really like to go to in a couple of neighboring small towns...they're the ones we grew up with.  Now, all of the playgrounds everywhere are engineered to be almost "hurt-proof," and things like merry-go-rounds, metal slides, big-jump swings, and the like are gone and gone.  I'm not advocating with a "hurt the kids" banner here...but I am saying we, they, all of us, could use more failure in our lives.  

Team failures have 
lessons learned too.

Tom Brady, the winningest NFL quarterback, 7-time Super Bowl winner...and 199th overall pick when he was drafted recently, spoke with Fortune.  One quote that stood out was, "They have to show up every day with a good attitude, humble when things go well, curious to learn more when they don't go well."  When we normalize losing and stop coddling, we open a door of possibility and growth for our children.  Think about your life - have you learned more when everything went well...or when it crashed down?  In the disaster world, we talk about "successes and lessons learned."  Through the things that don't work out in our favor, the first time, or at all, we tend to create the motivation and action plan for improvement.  

Failure stacks up. 
And we get better.

Brady went on to say, "We've all faced different challenges in life; we've all faced our own adversities.  Look at the hardest things that have ever happened.  We look back at those and realize they're the best things that could've happened."  We recently stopped taekwondo and moved to wrestling for our kids.  In most sports, on most plays, you can "hide" on the coattails of "that kid" that carries the team.  With wrestling, you're it...all in...for better or worse.  As we've talked about in our home, that sounds like more of a proxy for real life and things like our marriage, jobs, and other roles.  Similarly, it has spurred conversations around the preparation - conditioning, learning moves/counters, and such.  In life, do the right prep, tweak the future based on past actions, and we're more likely to find success.

Get back up
after the little
failures.

Another thing with wrestling has tweaked our thoughts that victory may be defined in small ways...much like life.  The goal is to not get pinned in the first period.  Or make it to the third period.  Or, get a takedown this match.  In other sports, the proverbial "everyone gets a trophy and a snack" sort of thing, we're not doing many favors.  Iron sharpens iron.  As a new wrestler, our kids are going up against some kids who, by age 8, have literally been competing half their lives...they're good...they'll win.  We're accepting the defeat...and looking for small wins within the battle.  We can talk about how they lost the war (the match in this case), but how some of the small battles went well...and which ones didn't go well.  We can embrace defeat, learn the lessons, scar their hearts/egos a little bit, and come out stronger on the other side.  

Sometimes they're
better...sometimes
stronger.  Just don't
quit.

Brady also talked about "every time they mess up, we send them to an easier place to succeed."  In his example, he had to grind...hard...every year to move to a role, finally as a senior, as a starting quarterback in high school.  Now, that same kid likely would transfer to another school where he'd be a starter to start with when he landed in the new place.  In many ways, this is a mistake.  We move from a small fish in a big pond to a small fish in a small pond.  The problem is now (and only increasingly so) that the pond our kids will face as adults is not only global but science fiction.  You don't have to be the best computer programmer in your family, block, neighborhood, town, city, county...anymore, but compete with the hungry-for-success kid around the world...and now the AI robot.  

Talk about the 
lessons while 
they're fresh.

Overall, when were you competing hard enough, daring mighty enough, acting brave enough, or putting it all out there enough...to have a chance of losing?  For most of us as adults, we fall into our comfortable, complacent routines where failure is pretty far away.  When we strive to try new things, go big, try a new thing that is big enough, we can show our kids that failure is okay...and model our response to it.  It doesn't have to be the "damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead" sort of quit your job, change professions, move across the country, and hope to make it in the proverbial "Nashville" sort of thing.  It could be signing up to sing at church, joining the community softball league, or something similar.  It won't go well at first...but...if you stick with it, you'll get better...and it will be fun.  There will be small wins (new friends, new skills, new conversations) along the way...but you probably won't be the champion on your first day.

Winning only
comes from 
losing.

As we wrap up, hopefully this post serves as a reminder and call to action...to stop swimming in the ponds where you win every day...in other words...seek out losing.  It sounds counterintuitive, but the more we build our children's ability to fail and realize it's not fatal, the more we're equipping them for the real world.  When we taste defeat...it makes victory that much sweeter.  Also, take time to read about and study the failures of famous people that have come before us and those in our circles to see real-world examples of how resilience is built.  Most biographies that are worth being written are full...very full...of a life full of hardship and the overcoming...over and over...to get to success.  Talk about and learn those lessons.  Look for the places for you (and your children) can learn similar lessons firsthand.  

With you in the arena, from ours to yours...Happy Trails!

Call to Action: 

• Pick out three things that you or your children can fail at this week (game night, new activity, something out of the comfort zone).  
• 1 - ___________________ 
• 2 - ___________________
• 3 - ___________________
• Discussion: Consider what you/your family could/would/should (level of commitment) and start/stop/sustain (action) in terms of failing.  It's not fun...but it is worth it.  You have to commit to leaning in...for a little while.  Dropping out of "wrestling" the first night of practice doesn't help get you very far in terms of life lessons.  

Further Reading, Motivation, and References:

- The Power of Failure - Ted X or this Ted X or this one...maybe this topic isn't all that original. 

- “Good judgement is the result of experience and experience the result of bad judgement.” Mark Twain