Episode 225: Stop Shielding Your Teen from Failure
Today’s Teen’s Don’t Fail Enough
I don’t know if you’ve noticed this, but a lot of teen’s aren’t allowed to fail.
I know of parents who do their teen’s homework for them, let them drop classes when they get too hard, make up excuses for them so they don’t get in trouble or have to pay a consequence, or in some other way protect their teen from failure, or facing the consequences of failure.
In fact, a lot of parents believe that it’s their job to keep their teen from failing to ensure that they are successful.
If you’re like a lot of today’s parents, you might believe that if your teen’s not successful, that you’ve failed as parents.
Why We’re Afraid to Let Teens Fail
It makes sense that you might be afraid to let your teen fail, because there’s a lot of societal pressure for teens to “succeed”.
Teens are expected to succeed in the classroom, on the court or on the field, in the workforce, or at college, or in relationships. And, not only do you feel it as their parent, but your teen is very much aware of the pressure to succeed.
Often, this effort to shield teens from failure is made with the best of intentions, but it disempowers the teen, and believe it or not, makes it feel even more imperative to succeed and avoid failure at all costs.
Failure is Okay and Important
The problem is, when you protect your teen from failure, it actually deprives your teen of valuable lessons, and the discomfort of having to deal with failure, which emotionally reinforces the lesson.
It is this process of trial and error, and the risk of failure that teens need to learn and develop. In fact, lots of research indicates that failure is an important part of developing resilience and future success.
Another thing that’s important to consider is that, when you bail your teen out and don’t let them fail, you communicate to your teen that, “You can’t handle this. I better do it for you.”
A few years ago, there was somewhat of a sexting/nudes via text scandal that went through my town’s high school. A lot of parents tried to hide their teen’s involvement, because they didn’t want it to “ruin” their teen’s life.
Well, that attitude makes it even scarier for the teen. To make it worse, we brought an expert out to speak to the community, and her main premise what that something like sexting will “ruin” a kid’s life.
Instead, we need to be teaching our teen’s that their lives are un-ruinable. We need to teach them how to be responsible for their failures and how to turn them around.
Empowering Your Teen By Letting Them Fail
The truth is, your teen needs the autonomy to fail and to struggle to help them grow, develop resilience, and to help them learn and manage their personal independence.
Like I said earlier, your teen’s life is un-ruinable. They can make mistakes, fail, and struggle and still be okay. In fact, they need mistakes, failure, and struggles for them to discover who they are, what they value, and to truly develop resilience.
You can help by showing them that you truly believe in them and that their life is un-ruinable. You can show them confidence in their ability to figure things out and recover from failures, by not freaking out on them when they fail.
You can show them that it’s okay to fail, by actually being okay with them failing, paying the consequence, and being okay with them making corrections and adjustments.
Do You Want to Help Your Teen Develop Resilience?
So, do you want to keep bending over backwards to protect your teen from failing, or do you want to give them the opportunity to learn from their own failures and from their own experience?
Do you want to be the kind of parent who constantly fixes everything for their teen, or do you want to be the type of parent who has confidence that your teen’s life is un-ruinable?
