The Gift of Failure: How the Best Parents Learn to Let Go So Their Children Can Succeed

by Jessica Lahey

the ability to attend to a task and stick to long-term goals is the greatest predictor of success, greater than academic achievement, extracurricular involvement, test scores, and IQ. She calls this grit, and first discovered its power in the classroom, while teaching seventh-grade math. She left teaching to pursue research on her hunch, and her findings have changed the way educators perceive student potential. Gritty students succeed, and failure strengthens grit like no other crucible.

Lots of kids can ace a test using plan A, but it’s going to be

the kid who has tried and failed and regrouped in order to try again with twenty-five other plans who will create true innovation and change in our world. That kid is not only creative and innovative in his thinking; he is also unafraid to try out new strategies. He will have the courage and resolve to work through thousands of miscalculations as he pursues a working solution. He will be able to regroup in the face of repeated failures and like Thomas Edison, he will learn the lessons inherent in discovering the thousands of ways a lightbulb does not work before inventing the one lightbulb that does.

“issues with parents” as one of their main reasons for abandoning the profession. In a 2011 interview with CNN, Clark related an exchange with a principal who had been named the administrator of the year in her state but had chosen to leave education. “I

I love teaching dearly, but “issues with parents” have inspired elaborate fantasies in which I abandon the profession forever, move to Alaska, and raise sled dogs. “Issues with parents” are the stuff of my nightmares.

but many more do not, and leave my office convinced that the B-minus their child received for the semester spells the end of their dreams for educational excellence, economic security, and a lifetime of happiness.

Teaching has become a push and pull between opposing forces in which parents want teachers to educate their children with increasing rigor, but reject those rigorous lessons as “too hard” or “too frustrating” for their children to endure. Parents rightly feel protective of their children’s self-esteem, but teachers too often bear the brunt of parental ire.

Middle school is prime time for failure, even among kids who have sailed through school up to that point. The combined stressors of puberty, heightened academic expectations, and increased workload are a setup for failure. How parents, teachers, and students work together to overcome those inevitable failures predicts so much about how children will fare in high school, college, and beyond.

In order to help children make the most of their education, parents must begin to relinquish control and focus on three goals: embracing opportunities to fail, finding ways to learn from that failure, and creating positive home-school relationships. In the chapters to follow,

dribbling syrup on snow to make candy, coloring butter with the juice of grated carrots, and tracing patterns in the window frost with a thimble.

I’m not sure what my job is. One day it is to be my son’s friend so he will feel comfortable enough to confide in me, the next it is to stand firm as an authority figure and teach him to write thank-you notes whether he wants to or not.

over the course of a generation, were

transformed from “useful to useless,” profitable to priceless. As more children were born and raised into a life of leisure, parents were left to cobble together new parenting goals in order to raise these very expensive, nonproductive children.

many parents were paralyzed with the weight of their own power to tragically and irreversibly screw up their kids. As the fifties came to a close, a generation of children bent on rebellion and anti-establishment sentiment gave those experts plenty of ammunition in the case

The individual, and her sense of self-worth, eclipsed the value of community or family, and the American self-esteem movement took off. Unfortunately,

When we beg for answers to all those other nitpicky, insignificant questions, what we really want to know is “How will I know if I am a good parent?”

Parenting for autonomy. Parenting for independence and a sense of self, born out of real competence, not misguided confidence. Parenting for resilience in the face of mistakes and failures. Parenting for what is right and good in the final tally, not for what feels right and good in the moment. Parenting for tomorrow, not just for today.

We taught her that her potential is tied to her intellect, and her intellect is more important than her character. We taught her to come home proudly bearing A’s, championship trophies, and college acceptances, and we inadvertently taught her that we don’t really care how she obtains them.

Marianna is so concerned with pleasing her parents that the love she used to feel for learning has been crowded out by her craving for their validation.

But because she is scared to death of failing, she has started to take fewer intellectual risks. She knows that if she tries something challenging or new, and fails, that failure will be hard

evidence that she’s not as smart as everyone keeps telling her she is. Better to be safe.

The less we push our kids toward educational success, the more they will learn. The less we use external, or extrinsic, rewards on our children, the more they will engage in their education for the sake and love of learning.

Rewards may get results in the short term, but when it comes to encouraging long-term drive and enthusiasm for learning, rewards are terrible motivators.

Put simply, if you’d like your child to stop doing his schoolwork, pay him for good grades.

she was intrinsically a bad speller and shouldn’t be penalized for that.

First, rewards don’t work, because humans perceive them as attempts to control behavior, which undermines intrinsic motivation. Second, human beings are more likely to stick with tasks that arise out of their own free will and personal choice. Given the choice between sticking with a “I have to” task or doing something else, most people would choose anything that is the product of their autonomy and self-determination.

Why We Do What We Do: Understanding Self-Motivation,

Brothers game Soma, “The World’s Finest Cube Puzzle Game,”

In Deci’s view, money does not motivate, so much as it controls, and that control disrupts our sense of intrinsic motivation.

that just about anything humans perceive as controlling is detrimental to long-term motivation, and therefore, learning. Want

As long as your expectation is that homework will be completed thoroughly, and on time, where, when, and how they complete their homework should be up to them.

if intrinsic motivation happens when kids feel autonomous, competent, and connected to the people and world around them,

Applying pressure in the form of control is the single most damaging thing parents and teachers can do to their children’s learning. Whether in the form of threats, bribes, deals, surveillance, imposed goals, evaluations, or even rewards and praise, control is the enemy of autonomy. We parents are all guilty. Full disclosure: There’s

Modeling is a powerful educational strategy—far more powerful than the offer of an iPod or ten bucks.

Self-imposed goals are about the safest place there is for a kid to fail.

For kids who are particularly afraid and anxious about failing, goals offer a private proving ground, a safe way to take risks, fail, and try again.

Children who possess competence through experience will be safer in the world because they will not launch themselves headlong into risks they are unprepared to handle.

Praise them for their resilience and the efforts they make to recover from their mistakes. Above all, keep your eye on the prize:

intrinsic motivation.

The sort of dependence created by rescuing and overparenting may feel like connectedness,

but because it communicates our lack of faith in them, it undermines healthy connectedness by emphasizing control rather than love and support.

kids are much more likely to take academic and emotional risks at school if they feel connected to their teachers.

So one of the most important things parents can do for their children is to show them that they are not alone in the world, that they matter in the big picture, and that their parents are there to support them as they find their place within

I have to love them enough to put their learning before my happiness.

The Power of Habit, Charles Duhigg

AUTONOMY-SUPPORTIVE PARENTS VALUE THE MISTAKES AS MUCH AS THE SUCCESSES.

One way to teach our children that we value mistakes as an educational tool is to support and love them as much during the mistakes as we do during the successes. Find the lessons in the failures. Help them discover new ways to cope and rebound from their mistakes in order to do better next time. Empathize and love them when they have messed up, because that’s when they need our support the most.

AUTONOMY-SUPPORTIVE PARENTS ACKNOWLEDGE CHILDREN’S FEELINGS OF FRUSTRATION AND DISAPPOINTMENT. I get mad, too, when I can’t do something right the first time, but

they rejected the more challenging option in favor of one they could more easily master, thereby keeping their “smart” or “talented” label intact.

it all gets hard eventually, even the stuff you have a talent for.