Teaching Kids to Turn Setbacks into Success through Daily Life Lessons

“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.” – Winston Churchill, Ex-Prime Minister of the UK

As parents, you would naturally want your children to succeed at every step along the way. In fact, we know that you would do everything you can to smoothen out the children’s path to success. However, it often happens that despite all the efforts, success ends up eluding the children for some reason or the other. And, this inevitably makes the kids feel disheartened and dejected, and at times makes them lose sight of the bigger picture.

At Yuvashakti Model School, we believe that you can teach the kids to learn through their setbacks and move ahead on the path to success persistently. And, we have a few ideas that will surely come to your aid in teaching the valuable life lessons to your kids.

Praise the efforts regardless of the outcomes

It is often seen that people usually end up praising the children for the accomplishment, with words like “such a wonderful performance in Math” or “congratulations for getting the first rank at the dance competition.” However, failures are generally met with “you’ll have to do better next time.”

How about also adding something like “I really like that you put so much effort into it. I’m sure you will do even better the next time”? It will give them the enthusiasm to continue working hard regardless of the setback.

Understand when to step in to shield your children

We advise parents time and again not to intervene at every step of the way because that takes the children away from being self-dependent. However, there are certain instances where it is important for you to step in to shield your children from the setbacks.

For instance, if your child feels bad because his friends did better than him, step in and help him understand that his only competition is himself. Bring him the costume for his school play in case he forgets it at home. The crucial thing is to let him know that you have his back even through setbacks.

Develop a strong work ethic in the children

Dwelling on the failures along the way and wallowing about all the things that you could have done right takes you farther away from the road to success. So, you will have to teach the children the means to overcome the setbacks, and developing a strong work ethic is a great way of doing that.

Help your children by making them set a routine and create smaller goals to reach a bigger aim. For example, if they are preparing for the math test, have them set the aim at solving fifteen sums daily. Also, tell them to be honest in the effort, and be upfront about why they weren’t able to reach the daily goal on a certain day.

Be the role model from whom they can learn

Remember that office badminton championship that your children cheered you on for, but you were unable to score a win? It surely made your children disheartened, but you can turn this into a learning opportunity for them. Tell them that you enjoyed participating in the game, and you know now what to do for winning it the next time. It’s important to keep in mind that you are their biggest role model, and they will imbibe the lessons of taking setbacks in stride from your daily actions, as well.

We, at Yuvashakti Model School, recognized as the Best School in Rohini, Delhi, believe that the important thing is to teach our children that success comes to those who are relentless in the pursuit of it. With your constant words of encouragement and the effective ideas that we have shared above, we are sure that our children would learn to be dauntless and resilient enough to aim high and achieve their goals.

About This Author

Tanya Sharma Joined: November 13th, 2019