Picture this: It’s a few weeks into the school year and you’re getting the kids ready on a particularly hectic morning. In a mad dash they grab their lunches and backpacks and make it out the door just in the nick of time to catch the bus. Phew. But then you see it. Your child’s science homework—the assignment they worked so hard on the night before—sitting on the coffee table.
It would be easy enough to drive that paper to the school and drop it off at the office. After all, they put so much time into it. Or you could leave it there, and hope it becomes a lesson in organization for your forgetful kiddo. What do you do?
Years ago, writer and educator Jessica Lahey encountered this very predicament. There was a time when she would have picked the first option, and driven that worksheet to the school, saving her child from the consequences of forgotten homework. But then she made a shift when she began to look at her role as parent differently, and in a bestselling book, encourages other moms and dads to do the same.
“I had to stop equating the act of doing things for my children—saving them from themselves, scoring a smile and a hug when I showed up at school with a dropped mitten or toy—with good parenting,” she writes in The Gift of Failure. Instead, she says good parenting means backing off instead of swooping in, and letting kids mess up, make mistakes and even fail.
But this concept runs counter to most of our instincts as parents. We want our kids to struggle? Even worse, to fail?
“It’s a tough one,” agrees Sara Loftin, a clinical therapist at Children’s Health in Dallas. “I think a lot of parents try to set their kids up for success by avoiding failure which seems to make sense, because those are opposites. But by avoiding failure in an attempt to raise successful kids, we’re actually doing them a disservice.”
The Overparenting Problem
You’ve heard of helicopter parents who tirelessly hover too closely over their kids. What about Velcro parents? They’re overly involved and can’t let go. And then there’s the snowplow parents; they seek to remove all obstacles from their child’s path so they don’t experience pain, failure or discomfort.
Whatever you call it, experts say it’s a pandemic of overparenting—and it’s holding kids back. But what does overparenting really look like?
It’s easy to spot in adolescence, when a teen on the cusp of adulthood sort of “fails to launch,” says Loftin. But often, overparenting starts much earlier and it can be harder for parents of little kids to notice they’re doing it.
“Overparenting is something as mundane as a 3-year-old trying to put on clothes, and you see them get frustrated, so you dive in and just do it for them,” she says. “Or you see your child get into a disagreement on the playground, so you swoop in problem-solve for them.”
It’s all well-intentioned, says Amy Egan, an Allen-based parenting coach and owner of Texas Parenting. “Parents are wired to help their children avoid pain,” she explains. But too often, that translates into helping them avoid any struggle at all.
“Discomfort and disappointment are a big part of real life. We need to practice dealing with it from early on.”
There are several other reasons parents might fall into the trap of overparenting. Maybe they’re determined not to parent the way their own parents did. Maybe they see their child’s successes or failures as a reflection of them. Maybe they just like to feel needed. But most often, it’s that parents are uncomfortable with their children experiencing negative feelings.
“I realized when I delved into my parenting that I was trying to avoid my kids feeling these things because when they were upset, I was upset. So, I believe we are often trying to placate them to make ourselves feel better,” says Egan. “Discomfort and disappointment are a big part of real life. We humans need to practice dealing with it from early on.”
The Messages We Send About Failure
The struggle to let kids face difficulties is hard for parents, but for children, the struggle is necessary. According to Lahey, research shows that children whose parents don’t allow them to struggle with something—let alone fail at it—are “less engaged, less enthusiastic about their education, less motivated and ultimately less successful than children whose parents support their autonomy.” Why? Because when we swoop in, we’re unknowingly telling them about their own competence.
“We’re sending them the message that ‘you’re not capable’ or ‘I don’t trust you to do this on your own,’” says Loftin.
Egan agrees, “If Mom or Dad are always fixing things for them the child never gets to learn they are capable of fixing their own mess-ups.”
We’re also sending that message that failure is bad; an always negative experience instead of something to learn from.
“We’re saying, it’s not OK to fail, you have to do it right, you have to be successful all the time,” says Loftin. “And if you have a fear of failing, you will try to avoid failure at all costs. And so when you do ultimately fail, because we all do, it will crush your entire self-concept or it will be something that you can’t pick yourself up from.”
Failure is a part of life. And experiencing it—and bouncing back from it –builds resilience. After all, think of the scientists or athletes who succeeded not in spite of failure, but because of it—and what they learned from it.
Instead of something to fear, we can frame failure as an opportunity for our kids. Loftin points to this example: In a counseling session with a sick child at Children’s Hospital they were stacking blocks. The child wanted to build a tall tower but kept constructed it in a way that it would topple over. There were tears, there were tantrums, there were outbursts. And Loftin could feel the child’s parents staring at her, seeming to ask, why wasn’t she just helping him build it?
When finally, after about ten tries, the boy built the tower to the top, he positively beamed with pride. And that small moment, his mother told Loftin years later, was a turning point in his treatment. He learned he could persevere and do hard things.
“What if we had just stepped in and done it for him?” said Loftin. “Then we would have robbed him of this opportunity to work so hard and figure it out and do it on his own. It seems like a little thing but it’s these small moments that build successful, self-reliant kids.”
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Helping Kids Fail
Leave those roadblocks in your child’s path. Let them struggle. And let them fail without stepping in to save them. Because ironically, failure is a key to success in life.
“In the future, kids who haven’t experienced failure are kids that can’t do for themselves. They can’t navigate social situations and they can’t stand up for themselves because they’re used to someone always fighting their battles for them,” warns Loftin. “They start to have this external locus of control … they can’t take ownership over what they can change themselves and how they can benefit their situation.”
On the other hand, children who are allowed the space to fail at something learn that they can recover and are more self-confident and emotionally strong.
So how can we help them fail? And then, how do we help them cope when they do?
It’s important to start when they’re little, says Egan. “It’s going to be much more challenging to allow your older child to fail and learn life lessons if you have not done so while they were young,” she explains. “When children learn from an early age they are responsible for restitution of their mistakes, and therefore learn they are capable of doing so, they are likely to be more responsible and confident when older. So, the big motivation for allowing failure when they are young is you are training them to handle the big stuff when they are older.”
For the youngest children, this might look like backing off and letting them struggle. Starting around age 3, take stock every month of new things they can do for themselves or the family.
Then around age 5, check in every birthday. Loftin suggests asking, “what can my child do now that they couldn’t do last month or last year? What’s a new responsibility? And bring them into that conversation.”
As children get older, give them space to make mistakes, then allow the natural or created consequences that follow. Encourage them to try new things—and show restraint when you see them about to flounder—to foster an attitude that failure is OK. And praise the process, not the outcome. This helps foster a growth mindset—the belief that one’s skills and qualities can be cultivated through effort and perseverance.
Then, when children do experience failure, be supportive, but don’t try to fix it.
“One thing parents try to do is solve the problem instead of just sitting there with them. We’re uncomfortable with their [negative] feelings so we say things like, ‘that’s OK you’ll make the team next time,’ or ‘you’re fine, don’t worry about it,’ instead of just saying, ‘yeah this really stinks,’” says Loftin.
She falls back on the “be with attitude,” a tenet of child centered play therapy: “I am here, I hear you, I understand, I care. But that doesn’t mean I have to make it right.”
Then, when they’re ready, move on. “Once the mistake is in the past it is very important the parent not continually remind the child of the lesson,” says Egan. “This sends the message that parent does not believe the child is capable of learning from the mistake.”
Another way to help kids through failure? By modeling it yourself. Offer a story about a time when you failed at something or let them see you make a misstep. “One of my favorite lines is ‘grownups make mistakes too,’” says Loftin.
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When Parents Need to Step In
Of course, there are times when parents should swoop in. “You never want your child’s life to be in danger or for them to experience serious harm,” says Egan. “And if your child is experiencing serious bullying it may be time to step in.”
For older kids, be mindful that their missteps aren’t signs of a mental health issue. If you’re concerned about an eating disorder or addiction, or if your child has become withdrawn or experiencing anhedonia, step in and find help.
But swooping in or standing back doesn’t have to be black-and-white, all-or-nothing. There can be some middle ground, says Loftin. Consider something like your child failing science class, where there could be a spectrum of ways parents get involved.
“On one end, I do all your homework for you. I nag you constantly to make sure you’re studying and then you don’t fail science. On the end, I watch you watch from a distance, don’t step in at all, and let you experience the natural consequence,” she says. “I think here is where you find a middle ground. Have a discussion with them: ‘Hey, it seems like you’re on the path to fail science. I wonder what you can do to avoid that?’ Empower them to fix the problem.”
Books to Help You and Your Child with Failure
For parents:
The Gift of Failure: How the Best Parents Learn to Let Go So Their Children Can Succeed, by Jessica Lahey
How to Raise and Adult: Break Free of the Overparenting Trap and Prepare Your Kid for Success, by Julie Lythcott-Haims
Thrivers: The Surprising Reason Why Some Kids Struggle and Others Shine, by Michele Borba, Ed D.
For kids:
A Kids Book About Failure, by Dr. Laymon Hicks
The School of Failure: A Story About Success, by Rosie J. Pova
Mistakes That Worked: 40 Familiar Inventions and How They Came to Be, by Charlotte Fultz Jones
Top illustration: iStock
