Fail Forward: Embracing Growth Through Adventure

Kids are afraid to fail. Social media portrays everyone living their best lives and rarely show setbacks and challenges. This has stifled our childrens' ability to try new things and express themselves in a unique way. They have no model for failure.

Our goal as parents should be to open our children's minds to wonder and possibility. We want them to try everything until they find what motivates them and makes them tick. To do this, they need the ability to fail forward. Take the 9 year old girl that wants to play guitar but struggles to play the chords to "Smoke on the Water." It would be very easy as a parent to let them drop guitar lessons and try something else.

Yes, this would relieve their current frustration, but is it really teaching them to fail forward? No. To fail forward, you and your child must explore every avenue to become successful - this might mean extra lessons or even you as a parent learning how to play guitar. Failing forward is not the same as giving up, it is about giving your child the opportunity to try something and feel good about it, even when the outcome doesn't go their way.

Resiliency can be a tough skill to build with this generation withdrawing from socialization by solely communicating through phones and mobile apps. The only way to build resiliency and ultimately confidence is to instill the "get back on the horse" mantra that our parents used with us.

But by not letting our kids go to sleepaway camp or tryout for the volleyball team based on our concerns, we are limiting their ability to become resilient. As a parent, we should look to push to pursue new things, encourage giving max effort, and be there to pick up the pieces when something doesn't work.

Instead of letting kids hide behind screens, lets teach them how to fail forward instead.