Bouncing back from academic failure

Children face various minor “failures” from an early age: falling down, missing a goal, losing a card game, etc. Learning to cope with these disappointments prepares them for the bigger challenges they’ll face at school.

To help your child bounce back from an academic failure, you can start by helping them deal with everyday setbacks. Here are some examples:

• Help them gain autonomy
• Let them know you believe in them
• Help them find solutions
• Etc.

Some children take failure extremely hard. Not succeeding, or not meeting their own expectations, causes a spiral of negative thinking. They can end up questioning their worth, losing confidence, or convincing themselves that their friends and family will stop caring about them. You can help your child avoid going down that path by teaching them to put things into perspective. Here are some suggestions you can make:

• Look at things from a different angle: Will this still bother you in 10 minutes? What about in an hour, a week, a month, or a year? How much does this bad grade really matter? Is your school year in jeopardy?
• Be kind to yourself: Would you be as hard on a friend as you are on yourself?
• Reflect on similar past situations: Did you lose all your friends afterward? Was your value diminished? What did you learn from the experience?
• Etc.

Failure is really just another word for opportunity, as it offers a chance to improve. But your child might need help drawing the right conclusions. To give them a hand, you can ask general questions about what happened:

• How did you feel that day?
• If you could watch a replay of what happened, what would you do differently?
• Were you distracted by something (e.g., a thought, noise, grumbling tummy)?
• Etc.

Using their answers, you can help guide them toward solutions that will allow them to be more successful the next time around. Here are some examples of potential takeaways:

• Always eat breakfast the morning of an exam
• Study more
• Exercise to relieve stress
• Etc.
   

It can be helpful to implement effective solutions to avoid repeated failures. Depending on your child’s situation, you can suggest various options:

• Say the instructions they need to follow out loud
• Find strategies to improve their attention span
• Develop better self-control
• Research ways to be more flexible
• Etc.