The Country School is an independent, coeducational, Pre-K through 8 school founded in 1934.
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Failure IS an Option
Upper School English teacher Becky Amaral shares why failure is an important part of childhood.
Before our son learned to walk, he fell. And we let him. We let him fall over and over and over again. Because we knew he needed to fall. We knew he needed those experiences to recalibrate his next walking attempts. We knew that if he never fell, he couldn’t learn to walk.
Parents of toddlers are naturally comfortable with failure. It’s part of the path to learning and success. To prevent all falls and failures in this process is to prolong (or even prevent) the learning process.
Now, as I have a school-age child, I have to remind myself to get out of his way and let him “fall” at other things. Maintaining a comfort level with failure is a challenge on both sides. We look for opportunities for our son to try something, fail, learn, adjust, and try again. We play board games and video games as a family, he takes piano lessons (weekly opportunities to miss a note and try again), we have backyard soccer tournaments.
To be clear, I want my child to experience failure, not to be a failure. I want him to develop the “let me try that again” outlook that leads to success. No successful person ever achieved their greatness without failing first … and failing often. Success happens when people learn to see failures as growth opportunities.
Michael Jordan knows this. “I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career; I’ve lost almost 300 games. Twenty-six times I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”
Our society does not often celebrate failures. We attach a negative stigma to getting things “wrong.” Failure is something to be ashamed of and avoided. And as parents, it feels natural to want to shield our children from the disappointment and the pain of failure. But the struggle is where the real learning happens. If we shield our kids from that now - when failures are small - how can they develop the skills they’ll need to cope with and navigate larger setbacks in the future?
In his article “Teaching Children It’s OK to Fail,” Dr. Jamie Howard reminds readers that “genuine self-confidence is created by being good at something, especially when it requires effort to get good at it. Shielding children from this process can create a fragile sense of self-worth.”
Tracy Inman, an expert in gifted and differentiated instruction from the University of Kentucky, shared this arresting notion with us when she came to work with the faculty last year: Imagine that during the first five or six years of school, a child earns good grades and praise without having to put forth much effort. What are the things that child is NOT learning?
Intrinsic motivation.
Problem-solving.
Empathy.
Grit.
Learning what to do when confronted with failure may be an even more important lessons for our children than academic content. And they are watching us. How do we, as parents, respond to and handle our own failures? Or theirs? Do we give up or try again? Do we accept their failures as part of learning, or do we try to minimize their discomfort and disappointment? Do we try to eliminate the opportunity for failure altogether?
There’s a lot of research out now about the power and importance of “grit” (or persistence or resiliency) — there’s less about how to help our kids develop it. Here are a few ways we are trying to help our child be “gritty:”
We read about other people’s mistakes. It’s often easier to see the learning potential in someone else’s mistake than it is when it’s our own. The Kid Who Invented the Popsicle and Mistakes That Worked are some of my favorite books specifically on mistakes, but every picture book and chapter book we share has opportunities for these discussions as well.
Last year, we started going to the climbing wall at the Y. On our first few trips, he didn’t make it very far. But each new trip up the wall gave him an opportunity to try a different route, to get a little higher. He started to set mini-goals for himself and then, once those were achieved, he picked new goals. The climbing wall became a safe place to “fall.”
I try to let my child see my own failures regularly. I let him know when I fail. I explain when things didn’t go the way I’d hoped; I show him how I evaluate the situation and come up with a plan to try again. And when the second (or third, or fourth) try works, I share my successes with him.
When he fails, I help him navigate that same process so that he can, as C.S. Lewis said, fail “toward success.” Together, we try to figure out what did work as well as what he might do differently the next time (because there will certainly be a next time). I have to resist the urge to just “fix it” for him. I have to let him struggle and strain if I have any hope of him learning to strive for success rather than give up and walk away.
Mistakes are, as James Joyce wrote, “portals of discovery.” And each mistake represents a chance to learn something from the experience and to come back with more information for the next time. And so we continue to let our son fall.
Recent News
List of 5 news stories.
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Kindergarten Students Serving Others!
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Spring Athletic Award Winners
Congratulations to all our spring athletics award winners and to all our Cougar athletes who participated in sports and clubs! This spring, TCS offered Boys’ and Girls’ Lacrosse, Pickleball Club, Running Club, and Volleyball Club. Providing so many athletic opportunities took a village—thank you to our amazing coaches, volunteers, and parent drivers for making it all possible! And thank you to our students for setting an example of dedication and sportsmanship!Read More -
Summer Trips for Upper School Students in 2025
It is with great excitement that The Country School announces the addition of 2025 summer trips for our Upper School students!Read More -
The Country School Celebrates 90 Years and Installs Jay Parker
Read MoreThe Country School is proud to be celebrating its 90th school year. This milestone year also marks the beginning of a new chapter with the appointment of Jay Parker as the 7th Head of School. -
Conversation & Homecoming - Saturday, February 24, 2024
Read MoreThe Country School, Talbot County Free Library, and the Avalon Foundation, sponsors, join with fourteen other community organizations to present Conversation & Homecoming with Carole Boston Weatherford and her son, Jeffery Boston Weatherford, a program free and open to all.
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