Failure must be an option

“Failure is not an option.”  If you are the surgeon repairing my heart, I trust that is exactly your attitude.  But when parenting, we’ve got to be open to a different mantra.

Biographies, business self-help books, and VH1 retrospectives often portray failure as a significant opportunity for learning and growth – someone rises to prominence, fails, and then climbs back, only this time with a greater depth of understanding and meaning to what they do.

Somehow as parents we read those books, hear those stories, and yet we go to great lengths to make sure our children avoid failure.  So it is with some trepidation that I tell you the following story.

Recently our oldest turned 15 1/2.  Normally we don’t acknowledge half birthdays, but this meant that he qualified to apply for his temporary driver’s permit.  I thought we had communicated to him that he needed (was required) to read the handbook before taking the written exam.  On the way to the testing station, which is not close to our home, I asked him some general questions to which he did not seem to know the answers.  I asked if he had read the book and he said, “Some of it.”  He chose not to read most of it because he didn’t see the relevance to his anticipated experiences while driving.  For example, what 15-year old needs to know rules about child safety – he isn’t a child and he has no children.  I tried to point out that passing an exam like this wasn’t about what he believed to be applicable to his life, but about what the state requires him to know.  Anyway, I almost laughed out loud (perhaps I actually did) when I heard the woman behind the counter say, “You can always come back and try again tomorrow,” as my son got up from completing his exam.

On the way home we didn’t talk a lot (which is unusual for the two of us).  I told him I was feeling conflicted – happy he hadn’t passed without studying, but sorry for him because I knew he was excited to receive his permit.  I told him I would be happy to drive him to retake the exam after he had read the book.  About three weeks have passed and I’m still waiting.

We don’t want our children to fail.  If it is about our pride as parents and that ongoing competition with other parents through our children, then we need to grow up.  If it is about not having to take the time to redo something later, we need to be more patient.  If it is about sparing our children the pain of failure, then we need to take a longer view of their lives – they’re going to fail and experience pain.  Learning how to deal with those emotions while under our supervision is better than experiencing them for the first time while on their own and after years of being taught that they just don’t fail – that failure is not an option.

We say we believe that failure is a great opportunity for learning – we just want to gain our education in some less painful way.  The best / hardest part of the experience with my son was that he was one point from the threshold needed to receive his permit.  Had he gotten that one additional point he would have concluded, once again, that studying was not necessary in order to get by – he really didn’t need to know anything about child safety.  But earning a 29 reminded him that failure is possible and that one should then ask “Why did I fail?”, “What can I learn from this experience?” and “How can I keep this from happening again?”

Failure must be an option because avoiding it at all costs means avoiding opportunities to succeed and experience life’s meaning.

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