Teaching Kids about Successes and Failures; Confessions of a Proud Dad

The first few years of my son’s life were tougher than what they ought have been. The first two years of his life saw a very unpleasant situation at home between Mum and Dad before they split. The next few years weren’t much better; Dad was absent most of the time and Mum’s struggles were getting the better of her.

By the age of 5, this was a very scared young boy with no self-confidence and a poor self-esteem. Up to that point it was far easier for me to ignore this, as to acknowledge it also meant acknowledging the painful reality of my contribution towards my little boys fears. The other difficult part was having absolutely no idea how to turn the situation around.

Since then, I’ve made turning the situation around to be my number one priority, and as such have seen miraculous changes. The foremost strategy I have been using is simply to take control of some of the experiences he has where he’s facing a challenging situation, so as to ease him into it at a rate I know he can succeed at. After each achievement, his progress is then reinforced by bringing each achievement to his awareness.

“When you started you were too scared to let go of my hand, yet look at how far you just swam on your own!” I’d remind him excitedly each week since he started swimming lessons this year. “Only a few months back you could barely read ‘dog’ and ‘cat’ – now you can read almost all the street signs! Look at how good you are now because of all the practice you’ve been doing!” I’d celebrate with him each day on the way to school.

On each occasion, to start with he was reluctant to acknowledge his achievements, almost as if the empowering feeling it would bring him was fearfully unfamiliar. It would usually take a few minutes to sink in, before his demeanour gradually changed as his confidence slowly rose to the surface.

I even made a habit of taking photos of all the activities he had been making progress in as well, printing them out as small posters captioned by “I’m good at…” or “I like…” followed by the activity he was doing in the photo. Those photos are on every wall of the house now, so that he can see them every single day (they also give him something to practise reading).

My personal favourite is a picture of him hanging from a bar by both hands at a ‘gravity drop’ ride at Canberra’s Questacon Science Museum. This ‘ride’ is a bit intimidating for people of all ages, but for my son, it was too terrifying to go through with the first time he attempted.

After waiting in the queue for half an hour watching the people in front of him drop down this scary slide, he gave up and came back to me, crying with shame that he was too scared to take the plunge. After another hour or so of subtly working up his confidence with him, I finally managed to convince him to give it one more go. He was still just as terrified as the first attempt, only this time he pushed himself all the way, and ‘let go’ of the bar to drop down the slide. (Search youtube.com for ‘questacon slide’ if you’d like to see exactly what this ride is all about)

When he reached the bottom, his expression indicated a bit of uncertainty about how he should feel about the whole experience. The praise and excited celebration he got from his Dad about how brave he was for overcoming his fear however will be forever captured in the picture of him dangling from that bar, with the caption reading “I’m good at being brave.” From that moment onwards, I think he finally learned that bravery is not the absence of fear, but the ability to act in the face of it, and just ‘let go’. And let me tell you, given how full of fear this little boy has been, bravery is very much something he has managed to master.

With his first year at school over and his second just commencing, my now 6 year old son is much more aware of what he is good at and understands what it means to be confident. Running, long jump, swimming, spelling, reading, writing, maths, drawing, painting, music, making friends, showing manners – these are just some of the skills my little man can now list as things he is confidently ‘good’ at.

Learning to achieve and accept success is something that has taken a lot of work with my son, though in the process, it recently dawned on me that knowing how to accept failure and defeat was, despite being the most important part of success, something he had yet to understand. I have noticed him get a bit teary eyed on occasion at Little Athletics when he failed to come a place, but just how much he has become unable to deal with being beaten became apparent to me only yesterday. I’ll describe to you what happened and how I decided to deal with it, on the condition that you tell me your thoughts and how you think I can do so better in future.

A few weeks ago, his Grandpa taught him how to play chess, and he has been playing who ever he can, whenever he can, ever since. In my well intentioned efforts to give him confidence, whenever I play him at anything, I usually let him win, but only just barely win, so that he pushes himself to explore new levels of understanding about his abilities.

Yesterday, I forgot to let him beat me. When I had him in checkmate, I exclaimed “well for once I finally won!” The look on his face reminded me of someone in denial the moment they are told by a sullen doctor that a loved one has died.

“But…but…I can still move here” he kept insisting desperately, no matter how many times or with how much compassion I persisted in assuring him that it’s okay to let someone else win sometimes. His inability to accept defeat continued. The tension appeared to be mounting in him like an ever-inflating balloon, which, after at least 5 minutes of persistence, finally popped.

The outburst not only resulted in tears being shed, but an uncontrollable shaking, reminiscent of a panic attack. My instinct was to distract him or just let him deceive himself into winning to end his obvious trauma, however I felt that in that moment, it was time that he needed to learn about and accept losing.

Whilst I did try to calm him, it was difficult to stay calm myself, as I realised that this inability to show weakness had come from me. So, as he cried uncontrollably, I figured what the hell – so I did too.

There we were; father and son, both crying together, and over a chess game? No, it was much more. It was about accepting that to have control, sometimes you have to allow yourself to lose control. Even instinctively, as I write this, it feels almost unnatural and anti masculine to admit sitting alone in my lounge room, holding my 6 year old son whilst we both cried together. It feels like an offence on my pride. But that however, I realise now, is precisely the problem.

Letting male pride stand in the way of being able to show the emotion of defeat, the humility of letting go and the fear of losing control, has done what good exactly? If hanging onto that pride caused my son to have a nervous breakdown over a bloody chess game, how the hell will it affect him in other aspects of life?

I was eventually able to calm him by talking about more pleasant memories. We did other things for a while, but eventually he summoned up the courage to play another game of chess, once he was reminded of how brave he was of course.

Once again, I beat him. This time I did it on purpose. I knew the risks, but I had to take it. This time I was prepared for the reaction, and had the opportunity to intervene and guide his mind in a much more positive direction. He was far from happy of course, but at least this time he took it with disappointment rather than panic. In order to free him of the powerfully negative emotional attachment he had developed with the experience of losing, I joked around with him, working him up into a state of laughter, and even got him to say out loud that “I lost and it feels okay”. Eventually I was even able to manage “I lost and it feels good” to be said with a smile and a laugh, followed by a great big hug.

“This time” I explained, “we’re going to play again. Only this time I’m going to tell you over and over again, that you’re going to loose, that you should give up and that there’s no point in trying.” This I did, continuously over and over throughout the game. When I could see it was starting to get to him, I changed the tone of the taunting to sound playful, or worked up the intensity just as I let him take one of my powerful pieces, thus severing the emotional severity of the taunts.

This continued to build in intensity until, I stopped the game, demanded that he take the opportunity to quit, but of course allowed him the ability to keep going. Although the intensity of my tone distracted him from the game (and from realising that I was in checkmate) it did not however stop him from wanting to continue. When he responded with an insistence to keep going, he looked down, and the strangest thing happened. He tried to undo his last move so that we did not have to end the game. It’s almost as if now, his desire was to play rather than just to win.

I’m not sure how much of the explanation about needing to accept failure to appreciate success he really understood. I’m not sure that he understood then the importance of ignoring the voice that comes in the face of failure that tries to get us to give up, or the enhanced accomplishment that comes from pushing past that voice (though hopefully that understanding will come later). I think the part he understood most however was that no matter what situation he’s up against or who else he is competing against, the only opponent he ever has to worry about is the monster that lies within each of us, that brought about that dreadful hurt he felt whilst gushing tears and shaking uncontrollably. I’m pretty sure that whilst he doesn’t quite understand what that monster is, he knows now that he can beat it, because he has beaten it, and felt good after having beaten it so that now, the idea of winning takes on a new context.

He’s been exuding a new essence of confidence since that moment, so I hope I did the right thing, and that it had the right effect. The most important lesson I took away from this experience is that in addition to showing my son how proud I am of him when he succeeds, I need to balance that by showing how proud I am of him when he accepts defeat. To do that I must not only show how proud I am that he can overcome his fears, but allow him to feel free to express those fears. I guess the hardest part of all is that now I know, in order for him to feel free to express his fears, he must first see that I can do the same.

It appears I have much work do to. This is my start.

About the author: Stuart Adams is a Teacher, Careers Advisor, Dietitian and Founder of Top of the Class Tutoring Sydney.