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Hello Cris,
One year, two of my children won first place in sparring at the Diamond Nationals karate tournament in Minneapolis, MN. They were both excited to have won at such a competitive tournament and of course were thrilled at winning 5 ½ foot trophies! Then, one month later they both competed our National Karate intramural tournament here in Schaumburg, IL and both promptly lost their first fight. They were extremely disappointed.
After the loss, one of my children said that they were not going to compete in any more karate tournaments. I knew right away that this was a pivotal moment in their life. How they handled this setback would shape how they handle future setbacks. Our human nature has defense mechanisms that seek to protect ourselves by avoiding pain (and unpleasant situations), so when we experience failure it is natural to want to avoid that in the future. The problem is that it is unrealistic to go through life avoiding any setbacks. Life is full of disappointments and if we give up every time we experience failure, then we won’t be doing much. There is real pain in failure, but the devastation comes from no longer wanting to try. Once we stop trying we are dead in the water.
“Growth Mindset”
I used this difficult tournament loss as a “teachable moment” and explained to my kids that one of life’s most important skills is learning how to handle failure in a healthy way. We grow stronger through adversity if we persevere and don’t give up. I am happy to say that after we had this talk my child decided to keep trying. In the years to come my kids have experienced some great moments of victory and have had to experience some heartbreaking losses. But we try our best to focus not on the winning or losing but on the process. The process of continuing to forge ahead regardless of the ups and downs. You really can’t control the winning or losing but you can control the will to keep trying, to keep putting one foot in front of the other. Salmon Khan, the founder of online teaching sensation “Khan Academy” writes a blog about “Why I will never tell my son he’s smart.” He asserts that the growing body of research demonstrates that successful people have a “growth mindset” that doesn’t focus on winning or losing but on the process of working through difficult things. He says, “I decided to praise my son not when he succeeded at things he was already good at, but when he persevered with things that he found difficult.”
Parenting Mistake that Sets Up a House of Cards
It is a common parenting mistake in America today that we try to shelter our children from any disappointment or loss in an effort to improve their self-esteem. I would venture to say that the entitlement generation comes from the fact that we as parents may be overcompensating for our own childhood setbacks which we have not fully healed. I admit, I catch myself doing this often, however, psychologists tell us that this actually has the opposite effect. In the short term this seems to work – but eventually there will be a failure that we cannot prevent, and then everything comes crashing down like a house of cards. How we handle our failures and set-backs is paramount to our mental health. Life is 10% what happens to us and 90% how we react to it.
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