Frank Barnhill, M.D.

It’s true that success is a sometimes unrecognized part of failure and likewise failure is almost always a part of success.  Several years ago, a banker friend told me he would much rather loan money to someone who had experienced at least one major financial failure.  Since I obviously looked puzzled, he explained that once a person had gone through a financial setback, they had enough “failure experience” to be successful with their next adventure.  I saw the logic in his explanation, as few people learn their lessons the easy way.

Most children would probably never learn to stand and walk if their parents picked them up each time they took a step and fell.  And of course, what about kids learning to ride a bike or roller skates?  These are really obvious examples of success built on building blocks of repeated failures.  Now, lets take a look at a few examples of failure leading to success that are not so obvious.

Remember the last time your ten year old had a term paper due on Monday?  Possibly, even though he knew about it three weeks ago, he waited until Friday or even worse, Sunday, before he told you.  I can imagine your anger and disappointment as you asked; why didn’t he do it himself or at least tell you tell about it two weeks ago?  I hear this question a lot from parents of eight to fourteen year olds, especially around science project time!  I know a woman who actually did her son’s science fair project on the kitchen table on the night before it was due.  She spent three hours finding poster board, markers, graph paper, a thermometer and a barometer frustrated to the max.  She would never admit to the crime, but for his project, he was to observe temperature, barometer readings and weather over a two-month period.  If he just got the thermometer that night, where did he get the sixty readings?

When parents ask the above questions, I always ask a few of my own before answering.  In the science fair project case, I wanted to know if she had done this “rescue” type work for him before.  She hung her head and answered with a long list of dates and projects.  She or her husband had forced him to do his science projects at the last minute for the last three years!  Gee, I think I could have seen a pattern building.  They also did the same for two term papers, four book reports and countless due tomorrow pieces of homework.  Hey, the kid had it made.  All he had to do was wait until the last minute to tell his parents about a school project due and wham.  Getting the “whammy” actually describes what happened to his parents.  He was really manipulating them.  After they yelled at him for thirty minutes, he would cry and say; “You don’t want me to fail do you”?  Guess what?  His parent’s guilt hit big time and with that queasy deep in the gut feeling, they gave in.  Of course each time they vowed it would never happen again.

No parent wants their child to fail in school.  Some are willing to go to the extreme to keep them from ever failing at anything.  Let’s take a look at older kids and failure in the face of success.  Parents have been known to pay for six speeding tickets and hire lawyers to keep their teens from losing their drivers license.  These teens manipulate by using arguments learned from other teens.  Have ever heard “Gee dad, I think the speedometer was broken” or how about “If I lose my license, I guess you’ll have to be late for your job to take me to school”.  A really good excuse I heard from a 17-year-old girl was “If my mom has to take me to school, I’ll just die of embarrassment and lose all my friends!” Her parents did take her license away for a month and carry her to school.  She didn’t die of embarrassment, but she learned a valuable lesson.  She hasn’t gotten a speeding ticket in over a year and she didn’t die and the only friends she lost were those would were bumming rides.  I had one dad who told me he paid a five hundred dollar phone bill for his fifteen-year-old daughter.  Her mom had a private phone line install in the teen’s bedroom and told her how much they would pay per month for the line.  In one month, that young lady made two hundred forty six long distance calls to places as far away as Paris and as close as twenty miles.  Unfortunately, dad didn’t have the phone removed, didn’t discuss financial responsibility with his daughter and she did it again two months later.  In this case, neither of them learned their lesson.  He defended his inaction by explaining he didn’t want to embarrass her with her friends or have her be traumatized when she didn’t quite yet understand how to handle money.  Ten years later, as a married woman, she “max’ed” out six credit cards to the tune of twenty one thousand dollars.  Can you guess who bailed her out again?

In order for us to learn from our failures and mistakes, there usually must be some consequence to the behavior.  In the case of the son who didn’t do his science projects, I advised his mother to let him fail the next time he didn’t do an assignment on time.  She felt that would only hurt him in the long run, but I reminded her that one day he would need a job to support himself and his family.  If he failed to do his job assignments in an orderly fashion on time, then he would probably be fired from job after job after job.  Then I asked, are you going to support his family?  Sure, if he got an “F” for not turning in his project, yes, the other kids might tease him.  He may have to stay in at recess for a week or lose other privileges at school.  But, he would probably do his homework or project on time from then on.

These are the character building years.  Learning to cope with failure and disappointment prepares us for success as adults.  It’s obvious what happened with the twelve year old daughter who was not taught the basics of financial responsibility.  Most kids don’t learn on their own and most certainly don’t learn the right way on the street or from friends.  Parents are still the child’s best teachers when responsibility and right and wrong are the subjects.  Unfortunately, a lot of parents think schoolteachers are the best teachers.  Wrong!  Today’s laws and legal doctrines do not allow schoolteachers the leeway to mold the learning process like a parent.  Only parents can take away the privileges that mean so much to kids.  With that in mind, let’s look at a few tips for handling such manipulative kids.

• Allow your child to fail at a small task such as homework.  This gives you the chance to discuss how failure is a teacher of success.  You may also take the opportunity to reward future success in a positive fashion and not reward failure.  Don’t fall into the trap of buying a little present to make your child feel better about his failure.  This is sort of like buying a new dress or car when you feel depressed.  You set up a cycle of “If I feel bad or fail, then I must reward myself in order to feel better”.
• Be flexible in judging your child’s failure.  If indeed you see a steady improvement even in the face of failing grades, then by all means reward the progress appropriately.  Do not over dramatize the event.  Make the reward one that can get bigger or better as his progress improves.
• Do not confide your failures in your children.  At this age, they don’t understand how you could possibly withhold reward or pleasure from them when you failed yourself.  Talking about your failures makes you human, but confuses the kids about you as a parent.
• Be firm in your promises to take away privileges in the face of poor or uncooperative behavior.  If you are wishy washy then your child is in control not you.  Avoid making promises you can’t or won’t keep.
• Allow your child the space needed to cry, shout, scream or throw a temper tantrum and recognize it for the manipulation it seems to be.  Patience is definitely a virtue when a screaming child is on the floor.

I know there are many more examples and hundreds of parenting tips to go along with this topic, but my goal here is to get you started thinking in the right direction.  Is it North, South, East or West?  No matter which way the wind blows, each of us has the potential to be a great parent.