The Gift of Failure

Recently, a friend of mine posted an article on FaceBook about kids and their homework. In it the author expresses her consternation about ‘signing off’ on her 2nd grader’s homework. She writes:

But just what was required of me? Was I supposed to let him hand in only correct answers? Was I supposed to teach him the skills that he didn’t yet know on these enrichment-type worksheets? Or was I simply signing to show that I was aware of what he is working on?

She never asks the teacher the above questions, but that’s not what’s important. The real question is: when should parents and teachers allow children to experience failure? I don’t think this is a question just reserved for kids, I think this is relevant for anyone who is in a position to help or hinder someone’s growth--in other words, everyone.

I recall when my 4-6 year old students were preparing for a test and a concerned mother queried, “What if David doesn’t pass?”. I replied, “He’ll learn to try harder next time. Besides, he’s only 5 years old, if he doesn’t fail now, when is a more appropriate time?” I won’t bore you with the details, but an interesting conversation ensued about when it’s appropriate to fail and how that gift of failure can instill a sense of pride, responsibility and discipline.

There’s a tongue-in-cheek saying about elections: “vote early and often”. If you could vote early and often, you’d have a better chance of success. Similarly, the best time to make mistakes is when you are younger and the stakes are lower. The earlier a child fails, the easier it is to guide them towards success, resilience and the promotion of a growth mindset. A growth mindset believes that genetics and natural talent are only the starting point. Someone who uses their genetics as a springboard rather than an endpoint learns the value of hard work, determination and perseverance.

In this highly competitive world we tend to view failure as an event that slows people down and undermines confidence, but I believe we need to make a distinction between our failures and the failures experienced by another. Who learns confidence in their balance faster in the below examples?

1. A child loses his balance, falls down, scrapes his knee, cries because it’s painful.
2. A child who is caught before he loses his balance and doesn’t scrape his knee ever.
3. A child wearing protective equipment loses his balance, falls, down and hops right up, because he didn’t hurt himself.

I don’t think there is a single answer for everyone and what response is elicited from the caretaker is just as important as the event. However, I believe that if we obsess about every little failure, bump, bruise or scratch, we make people more fearful and less confident. By being so concerned about failure, and therefore success, we may stimulate the beginnings of a fixed mindset.

A fixed mindset equates making a mistake to being a failure. Children, and adults for that matter, need to let discrete events stand on their own merit instead of making overgeneralized extrapolations. Understanding success and failure this way allows a child to objectively critique their own behavior. This type of self-critique becomes a valuable form of self-discovery and self-discipline, which provide a foundation for positive growth.

Failure is one feedback mechanism we have to guide us through life, success is another. When failure is the main experience, a person may feel alienated from the concept of success and vice versa. This creates a distorted view of reality wherein one finds obstacles that do not exist or claims success where there is no merit.

And what about excessive failure? Some people thrive on failure and it makes them try harder and find ways around obstacles, while others can really wallow in failure and get stuck. Since the distortions are limitless, it is important for children to experience success and failure early on. It is the job of the parent or the educator to help calibrate the scales.

In the end, no matter how hard you may teach another about your failures, people are still going to have to experience their own. Practice makes perfect. When the two are in balance, failure will become the fuel that leads them to successes never imagined.

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The Equality of Unfairness

Growing up, the only time I ever heard that my friends and I were different was when someone was trying to start a problem. I’m short, my friend Kevin is African-American and my friend David is half-Jewish and half-Catholic. Growing up, we were a delectable trio for some school age malcontent. By the time I entered the fourth grade I had learned that life wasn’t fair and although ‘I was not interested in conflict, conflict was interested in me,’ to paraphrase Leon Trotsky.

No one gave us a break. In fact, each of us was sought out by an angry or frustrated party looking to improve their social standing at one point or another. Sometimes they even tried to drive us apart with rumors, but we learned to stick together. We recognized that this was the normal course of growing up, and we weren’t always 100% innocent.

There was one important exception when we were growing up: we, as a group of peers, often settled our own grievances. No one had taken that away from us. Being the smaller of the three, I mastered the art of gathering people to my cause quickly. Over time, disagreements were settled and all parties shared the same circle of friends by our own doing, not because someone made us.

Shortly after I finished grade school, modern society became obsessed with micromanaging these important life lessons and tried to replace them with a saccharin version of reality. And what did kids do in response? They became more creative and more secretive. Conflicts that could be seen on the playground and in the classroom went dark and viral with cyberbullying and to a greater and more deadly effect.

Micromanaging social interactions left society so busy placing a fence around every tree, that it has forsaken the forest of humanity. Taking away a child’s control of his own immediate physical safety renders them defenseless and can even ingrain learned helplessness. What’s more, not educating children about how to control their own space puts undue pressure on educators who then need to micromanage each dispute. The more rules, the more enforcement is needed. The more enforcement needed, the less time there is for education.

Childhood events are messy, but through positive peer pressure and cool, subjective analysis by good teachers and parents, children can and do learn to handle the social rigors of growing up. Better to learn early on, when the stakes are lower, that some days you are the predator and others the prey. Some days the hero and others asleep at the wheel--that’s called being human.

Helen Keller said, “Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success achieved.” With heat and pressure character is forged and lessons learned: prepare, by staying ever vigilant;  prevent, by confirming intent and avoiding conflict at all costs; protect, by taking appropriate action. A child must do these things, regardless of the outcome. A child cannot learn the lesson if it is co-opted by an adult or authority figure.

While studying philosophy at Drew University I read some of the Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes. He states:

NATURE hath made men so equal in the faculties of body and mind as that...when all is reckoned together the difference between man and man is not so considerable as that one man can thereupon claim to himself any benefit to which another may not pretend as well as he....the weakest has strength enough to kill the strongest, either by secret machination or by confederacy with others that are in the same danger with himself.

This is the reality we contend with whether we acknowledge it or not. If an attacker moves in he will not ask if his victim is ready or not, handicapped or whole, weak or strong, rich or poor. In fact, the weaker, smaller, or less attentive someone is, the less work it is for the attacker. Hobbes is right, we are equal, just not in the neat and tidy way society would like us to be.

My objective is to teach students that conflict is not about equality. Through the study of conflict, my students will master their strengths and weaknesses. This is the true equalizer. I tell my students, “I teach you all the same way: differently.” Every student has a ‘handicap’ and an ‘unfair advantage’, it just depends on who is standing across from them.

In the end, the flames of conflict are fueled when we distinguish and distance ourselves from one another. Minding this gap and finding common ground is the best way I’ve found to reduce conflict and amass ‘confederates’.

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Digital Demise

I’ve always been an advocate for movement and there are plenty of studies that show movement actually improves cognitive functions. I know I was quite the kinetic kid and if I didn’t get my daily dose of at least 3 hours of running around in my youth, I would be worse than an adult that woke up late, didn’t have their cup of coffee, lost their keys, found them in the car and then hit traffic right when they realized that their presentation was back home. In a nutshell, I was a young boy.

Today, the average school age child gets 26 minutes of recess per day due to curriculum changes….and that includes lunchtime. Kids spend approximately 72% of their time on core curriculum work during a 30 hour school week. That’s 21.6 hours in a chair a week. Meanwhile, the average worker is productive for under 3 hours a day. We expect school age children to sit in a chair for over an hour longer than the average paid adult can be productive in a longer day. We also spend over 400 minutes a day in front of some type of screen (TV, laptop/PC, phone, tablet). Yes, that means our children too! The digital age has not only made it easier to consume goods and services, but it’s turned us into addicts, gobbling up enormous quantities of ‘information’ while we sit like statues in front of screens.

Combined this is over 10 hours a day sitting in front of a screen or a teacher and only 26 minutes of free movement. School age kids should get an average of 10 hours of sleep, so there’s not much time left for eating 3 meals and moving from place to place, is there?

How do we expect children to be smarter and pay closer attention if they ‘have the wiggles’ or ‘the giggles’, because they are being asked to suppress their urge (biological need) to move? How do we expect children to be behave when they’re not getting enough sleep, because they’re over stimulated by the media they consume? How do we expect kids to be polite, patient and respectful of others when they’re overtaxed mentally and undernourished physically?

Meanwhile, we let prisoners out for an hour a day and feel guilty enough to create a whole new industry called ‘dog walking’ when our pooch is all alone for 3 hours, but we give grade school kids under 30 minutes of recess. So what do we do?

We can hack away at the screen time. Yes, I know that everything has gone mobile and digital, and that this is how children of the future will get ahead, but they’ll still need human attributes too. They’ll need discipline, awareness and organization in order to prioritize their tasks. They’ll need socialization skills, because although they may have fewer opportunities for ‘face time’, it will be that much more important to successfully navigate those interactions. Because of this more sedentary lifestyle that children are being born into, they will need the will and discipline to get up and move in order to improve circulation, reduce stress and maintain their health.

We can reclaim gym and recess. It is my opinion that more physical movement could actually make a class run more efficiently and reduce disciplinary disruptions. Reducing class time and re-balancing the time spent between the classroom and the gymnasium or playground could actually improve scores and kids’ overall health and general well being. According to another study, “Only 4 percent of elementary schools, 8 percent of middle and junior high schools, and 2 percent of high schools provide daily physical education.” And what will we get in return for sending our kids back outside or back into the gymnasium according to this study?

• Less bullying
• Increased feelings of safety
• More physical activity
• Better concentration

Having taught children for 2 decades, this has always been my contention, but now I have the studies to back it up and so do you. How will you use this information to improve your child’s life?

Don't Scare Your Children, Prepare Your Children

In my previous column, I expressed my concerns about a 5-year-old girl who had to sign a contract promising that she would not commit suicide or homicide. As a martial arts teacher, who has taught this age group for 17 years, I’d like to share my opinion on how to prepare your children for conflict in a healthy way.

A great driver of conflict, in my opinion, is fear. In teaching martial arts, my aim is not to scare you and leave you in fear, my aim is to remove fear by sharing knowledge.

Fear is typically a reaction to the unknown. It starts with the monster under the bed, moves into the ‘will I have enough money for Ramen noodles tonight’ and into the imaginary ‘bogeymen’ that we create to motivate us from time to time.

Children are already filled with their own fears of the unknown, so why add complicated adult fears when we can simply educate them about their own fears?

Show them ‘under the bed’ during the day. Or show it to them at night, holding their hand with a flashlight for you both. Giving your children the opportunity to face their fears with guidance and a little bit of their own control (their own flashlight) can go a long way towards building a life full of confidence. More importantly, they’ll learn a technique that can last a lifetime: light extinguishes dark and knowledge extinguishes fear.

Tag or hide and seek are great games that encourage awareness, reflexes, ducking, dodging and engage their imagination through discovering ways on how to use their size to their advantage. They can also learn the importance of when to be quiet and finding good places to hide. Or maybe even learn how you, an adult, thinks about ‘getting them’.

Make a fun ‘monster’ game where your children and spouse have to hide and organize a counterattack when the ‘monster’ comes. Exchange roles so that everyone gets to experience both sides. It’s important for them to play-act winning and losing so that they continue developing a mindset of strength and courage under ‘fire’.

When you are out, play observational games that could potentially help them avoid a conflict; include asking them the following:

Where are the exits?
Where would you go if you lost sight of mommy & daddy?
Who here is wearing a hat? glasses? mustache? scarf?

If your child becomes fearful, take your time to creatively encourage them to face their fears, but don’t push them. All of the above can help build context, confidence and questions about protection without ever having to bring up charged words like ‘suicide’ or ‘homicide’. As a side effect, children will become more engaged in the world around them instead of just the world between their thumbs.

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Violence Prevention Overkill?

Recently, an article was published out of Alabama about a 5 year old girl being forced to sign a contract saying that she would not commit suicide or homicide. I’d like to ignore the legal issue and simply concentrate on the questionable intent of the educators.

As an educator I want to encourage honesty and self-expression in a safe environment for my students, regardless of their age. Not only do my students learn more about themselves when they are encouraged in this way, but I also get to learn more about them. This is especially important because my teachings focus on conflict resolution through the study of martial arts. Since we only have control over ourselves, conflict resolution begins within oneself.

True self-confidence and therefore self-protection, comes from education of the self and an understanding of the world. If a child’s confidence in education is undermined, it can strip valuable information that would have helped them move confidently through their life.

Educators should not only promote learning inside the classroom, but should also help provide the security and foundation that  leads to learning outside of the classroom. If students do not trust their teachers or their school, then they may begin to hide negative feelings until it’s too late to intervene.

Parents entrust educators with their child’s safety and education for a large portion of their day. If the story mentioned is true, then there was not only a breach of trust between the student and teacher, but also a missed opportunity for a teachable moment.

For the sake of discussion, let’s assume the girl drew a gun in crayon, and not just something that resembled one. Let’s also assume that she then pointed her crayon at her friend and said, ‘pew pew.’ Finally, let’s remember that this is a 5 year old girl expressing herself.

We could discuss why she drew the gun. We could discuss why she pointed a crayon at her friend like a gun, but why complicate the actual situation by introducing a potential? Why would an educator voluntarily invoke the words ‘suicide’ and ‘homicide’ to a child too young to have the emotional capacity to cope with such terms?

I am sure the intention of the school was to make sure a girl was not going to hurt anyone, but the action of the school certainly makes me question whose actions were worse: a 5 year old girl’s imagination running wild or the adults’ imagination running wild? After all, it was the adults that actually removed the young girl from school that day after she signed the contract that she couldn’t understand.

It is my contention that the adults presumed the intention of the young girl based on their own perceptions.  It certainly seems that they projected their own experiences and knowledge upon her. In their attempt to protect one child from imaginary harm, the school violated the actual rights and arguably the psychological well being of a 5 year old girl.

So I ask the reader, when does the ‘cure’ become worse than the ‘fear’? Or worse, when does the ‘cure’ cause the very ‘fear’ it was meant to eradicate?


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