Helping children to deal with failure - Lawrence High School

As parents, it is natural to want to shield children from dealing with disappointments and failure in life. We want the best for them and cannot see them lag behind their peers in any respect and feel helpless to see them unable to handle any kind of raw deal that life may throw at them.

However, it is in their best interests and ours to let them handle frustrations early on, so that they turn out to be well-reasoned out adults later.

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Encourage instead of lending a helping hand: Kids are met with tiny frustrations even as young as infancy and toddlerhood. While kids at this age are very resilient and are not prone to giving into despair, there can be times when the child might feel like giving up. It is the duty of the parents to encourage their efforts and let them be at the task, rather than finishing it off for them.

Compete with self: However brilliant a child is, there is always going to be someone who is better. Hence, the aim has always to be bettering oneself than competing with the neighbour. If the focus is on acquiring skill and knowledge and not about beating the next person in an exam, there will be no anxiety or frustration of failure.

Realistic expectation: Parents need to keep realistic expectations from the child. It is not right to saddle them with their own unfulfilled ambitions. Tuning in to the child’s capacity, interest and capability will help the child to achieve his/her full potential.

Larger picture: Score in an exam is very temporary and does not mean much in real life scenarios. This is a truth that needs to be accepted and imbibed by both-parents and children. The larger picture in life is many a time missed out by pursuing shallow goals like winning a competition or topping an exam.

Open channels of communication: Children should feel free and comfortable in approaching the parents in any kind of situations. The lines of communication must be free from judgment on the parent’s side. The child must not feel threatened and should be encouraged to communicate his/her opinion.

Life is never fair and the goal of life should be taking pleasure and lessons from the journey and not keeping a destination in mind. If parents can teach this philosophy early on, kids will be better equipped to deal with failure.

Lawrence High School, located at HSR layout, Bangalore, focuses on educating children with traditional values to adapt and excel in the world. To know more about Lawrence school, please visit the website http://lawrenceschool.in/ and join us at our Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/pages/Lawrence-School/