Dealing with your child’s failure can be a very tricky situation and it really depends on the parent to understand where to draw the line between trying too hard to protect a child, from feeling bad or being too harsh and demotivating them completely.
Parents should be cautious in such a situation and should convey to the child that a little disappointment sometimes can be helpful.
Failure and success are two sides of a coin and every human being would have to learn to deal with both. Thus, experiencing the failure is important for one to develop coping skills for dealing with it in life and the ability to enjoy success and not make it a habit.
Some amount of failures and disappointments help a child develop emotional resilience, and the ability to be able to overcome it and not give up but to keep trying.
We must show them success stories to keep them motivated. Emotional flexibility in life only comes from such experiences.
Life is not going to always be an upward curve and situations may not always be in your favour. So, if a child develops the skills to overcome such scenarios, it helps him/her avoid a situation where one can easily feel frustrated and depressed.
One must remember that every problem has a solution, and the trick is to look for it and keep looking.
All of the above loses its significance when parents are not themselves aware of how to guide the child.
Some parents nag the child for every mark lost, push them to always be at the centre of everything, get the main role in every school concert, be the topper in every class, so on and so forth.
Such expectations again can negatively impact the child while he/she keeps trying hard to live up to every expectation.
The child will never feel good about themselves, as before every achievement there is lurking stress of achieving the next.
Some parents actually wish to live their own dreams through their children. Thus, they expect a child to be some sort of prodigy and excel in, if not all at least some of the skills that they could not pursue.
Subsequently forgetting that the child probably wants to pursue his/her interest or dreams even if it does not fit in the parent’s scheme of things.
The child not wanting to hurt their parents’ sentiments, feels obligated to pursue the same even if it is not his/her chosen field. This obviously leads to disinterest and the child is unable to excel in it.
(S)he may also end up failing and the parent needs to realise where really the lacunae are. It is important that they realise what the child wants to do, where his/her interest lies and then facilitate the process of helping him/ her find suitable pathways to achieve their objective.
Societal pressure today is one of the main reasons that parents end up pressurizing their children towards many things.
The need to show that their child is good at an array of things, or that their upbringing and guidance has been perfectly resulting in the child being a trophy child who they can flaunt in society, can lead to serious issues and pressures that a child ends might not be able to cope with and at some point (s)he ends up feeling like (s)he is a failure.
Parents need to be realistic and reasonable when setting out goals for their child, always keeping in mind their interest and potential rather than guiding them to do things which is their choice but not what the child is willing to do.
We can conclude by saying that every parent today should be aware of how to deal with their child’s failure.
Every such situation will require careful and adept handling of him or her. Every such opportunity should be used to make it a positive learning experience for the child, one which will empower the child to manoeuvre through the complicated journey of life.
There is no formula to parenting, we learn from our mistakes and if you feel that more needs to be done, we are all ears. Suggest ways in the comments below to share your parenting style and how it has helped you to bond with your child.
Also, do head to the Babygogo Parenting community to share your experiences and help our fellow mommies.