…It Just May Make Her A Success!
When my oldest, Riley, was in preschool she would often challenge me to a game of Concentration with her set of Dora the Explorer playing cards.
One holiday my father was visiting and he witnessed one of our games. Riley had a great memory, but she was only four. I beat her…not by a lot, but I won.
“Why didn’t you let her win?” my dad questioned me later.
“Because she didn’t,” I responded. Now, please understand, I’m no egocentric, self-centered father that needs to always win (although admittedly I am a wee bit competitive). The truth is, I know letting my daughter think she’s faster, smarter, stronger or more talented than she really is doesn’t do her any good. So, I win because she’s not good enough to beat me yet.
When I’m not beating preschoolers at card games, I teach elementary school, third grade. And, every now and then, I’ll get a parent who challenges me on his child’s book report grade.
“Why did you give him a C-? He worked hard on this. He really took a lot of time on it. Sure, there are some errors and I can see he didn’t respond fully to the task you gave him, but he’s proud of it.”
I appreciate effort. I love pride, and I am sure to comment on them, but if the kid earns a C-, he earns a C-.
Won’t that type of blunt reality stifle a child’s future attempts? Won’t that kind of honesty create an atmosphere where the child stops trying for fear of failing? On the contrary, I have found it drives little ones forward.
Riley continued to challenge me to Dora Concentration because she wanted to get better. She wanted to beat her Old Man. And, as parents, we don’t want to take the wind out of our kids’ sails. So, when we played, I consciously beat Riley only by a hair, maybe by just a few cards. Then, I’d offer her techniques she might want to try the next time to improve. She always felt she was just an arm’s reach away from beating me.
And, inevitably those kids who try hard on their reports, but don’t get the grade they wanted the first time around tend to up their game. They take my corrections, suggestions and encouragement to heart and improve dramatically on their next attempt.
Thus, if we handle these learning opportunities with both respect and compassion, resilience (or “grit”) becomes a habit.
Why shouldn’t we just allow our preschoolers to feel success around every corner? They’re only kids once, right? It’s because they’re only kids once, and the rest of their time on earth is as adults. Our job as parents is to prepare them as best we can for adulthood, and we know there will be failure in life. Allowing them to know some failure today teaches perseverance. It also allows our children to appreciate true success when they earn it.
My youngest daughter, Grace, was very creative, artistic and inventive, but she could not grasp the mechanics of riding a bicycle a few years back. While most kids her age had mastered two-wheelers, Grace was crashing on a regular basis. So, her mom and I layered her in sweatshirts and jackets and bought her the best helmet we could afford, and she’d go out biking with us looking like the Pillsbury Doughboy.
We live on a cul-de-sac, and I was out shooting hoops in the driveway one afternoon. Grace was all padded up and wanted to bike around the neighborhood. Well, while I was shooting, my heart was beating twice as fast as normal because my daughter was riding at what I perceived to be break-neck speed (when in fact it was nothing faster than what most kids her age ride).
I told myself, “She’s fine. You rode much faster when you were her age. What’s the worse that can happen?” Just then, smack! I turned to see she’d crashed on the sidewalk and was screaming. My fatherly instinct was to run over, scoop her up and save my little padded princess, but I knew that failure is a great teacher.
“Where does it hurt?!” I yelled.
“Everywhere!” she wailed. That told me she was okay.
“Roll over!” She did. No blood. Everything in its right place. “Bring your bike to the garage!”
She hobbled over with her two-wheeler, twisted handlebars and all. I took it into the garage for her, then checked her over. The scab she’d gotten the week before from a bicycle fall had been torn off, and she had blood running down her leg. I took her into the house and did my best Dr. Daddy impersonation.
I had let her fail. And, she learned from it: how to take a cul-de-sac turn, that I didn’t need to save her every time, that she was capable, and that I would never abandon her.
I’m not a Helicopter Parent, a Snow-Plow Father or a Tiger Dad. There’s a new term in parenting: Safety-Netting. If we think of life as a tight-rope walk, all parents want their children to find rhythm and balance, but the Safety-Net Parent lets his child have a go and refuses to be the harness that keeps her from falling…from failure. He lets her fall, but is underneath to catch her right before she crashes, like a Safety-Net (except when it comes to bicycling apparently).
To keep your preschooler coming back for more after a “fail” praise her efforts and improvement. Carol Dweck conducted a study where she found that children were more apt to take on new challenges when they were praised for their hard work, rather than their intelligence.
By the way, Riley beat me fair and square one day (actually, many days). I kept upping my Dora game as she improved. Then, one day she ended up with more cards than I did.
“Papa, did you let me beat you?”
“Have I ever let you beat me?”
“No, never.” She ran down the hallway yelling to my wife, “Mama, Mama, guess what?! I beat Papa at Concentration.” She still talks about that day eleven years later.
It’s okay to let your little one fail. The perseverance, the strength, the independence she learns from failure today will be her ticket to success tomorrow.
photo credit: skeeze via pixabay cc
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