Success is never guaranteed. That’s a lesson most adults are fairly familiar with, and it’s an unavoidable truth of daily life. But for parents, there’s a desire to protect kids from this particular lesson. That impulse is understandable, but it’s not always helpful. After all, from toddlers to teenagers, kids of all ages will encounter challenges and disappointments. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, and helping kids cope with these failures can be far more beneficial than insulating children from them.

Failures can help build resilience and illustrate to kids that they can overcome challenges. These are essential skills that are critical to long term success both academically and well into your child’s adult years. For parents, then, the goal is to help kids cope with failure in ways that are healthy, productive, and sustainable.

This isn’t always easy. But there are some steps that parents can take to help make the process smoother, easier, and more effective.

Why is Resilience so Important?

For most people, resilience is a learned skill. It’s not necessarily something you’re born with. Resilience is what provides one with the ability to weather challenges, to stay flexible, and to bounce back from setbacks. 

Think about it this way: we’ve all had those moments where things didn’t go right and we felt like giving up. Resilience is the skill that allows you to keep going and keep trying. But as with any other skill, resilience must be developed and nurtured. The roots of strong resilience skills often occur during childhood and especially during the adolescent, young adult, and teenage years.

How to Help Kids View Failure as a Learning Opportunity

One of the best ways to help build resilience in kids is to help them begin to view failure as a learning opportunity. There are several ways you can do this as a parent or caretaker. Some successful strategies include the following:

• Know that failure is hard: Acknowledge how challenging and difficult a failure can be, but be careful not to assign any moral value to success or failure. That is, ensure your child does not equate failure at a task with failure as a person.

• Help your child problem solve: When your child encounters a failure, talk to them and help them brainstorm solutions to succeed that they could apply the next time.

• Talk to your child about their feelings: And during these discussions, help your child discuss healthy ways to name, manage, and cope with their feelings. 

• Reframe the issue: Sometimes all it takes is a little reframing. Rather than thinking about something as a failure, examine the new opportunities that will occur or discuss how these new challenges will help. 

How to Encourage Problem Solving and Adaptability

One of the cornerstones of resilience is the ability to adapt and problem solve. And while these are learned skills that will develop over time, there are some steps you can take as a parent to encourage them. Some of those methods include the following:

• Help your child break down the problem: Sometimes the challenges your child faces can feel absolutely overwhelming and insurmountable. Breaking these challenges down into chunks can help the overall issue feel more manageable. This can lead to effective solutions and help model problem solving skills for your child.

• Ask open ended questions: As you discuss your child’s challenges with them, ask open-ended questions that, essentially, allow them to think out loud. These questions can center around how they’re feeling, what they’re thinking, and so on. But fostering discussion can help start the problem solving process.

• Encourage and offer advice, but don’t solve the problem for them (at least, not always): It’s certainly tempting to provide the answers for your child. As your child gets older, however, it’s important that they develop these problem solving skills for themselves. This means letting them puzzle through solutions. It’s helpful for parents to be involved in this process.

• Give your child space to respond, especially emotionally: Give your child time to experience the emotions that come with a failure or setback. These emotions are important and shouldn’t be ignored. Give your child space to safely experience these emotions before settling down to work on the problem solving aspect.

Model Resilience

One of the best ways to encourage problem solving and adaptability is to be a model of it yourself. There are several ways you can do this, but one of them is to practice resilience in your own life. When your child sees you bouncing back after a setback or challenge, they will better understand that success after a failure is possible (if not likely).

Sometimes this is easier said than done, especially with larger challenges and problems. There may also be mental health or systemic issues that can interfere with one’s ability to practice resilience. In children, this can be especially challenging. In some cases, talking to a mental health provider can be especially helpful.

Learning resilience can help better prepare your child for the challenges of everyday life. If you have questions about how to build resilience, you can talk to your child’s pediatrician. If your child is a patient at Children’s Healthcare Associates, you can make a wellness visit appointment at our Northbrook or Chicago offices today!