Speaker 1I'm not going if I'm going to be bad at it I don't want to try what if I can't do it the football tryout they refused to go to the art class they wanted to quit before it had even started the instrument abandoned after one lesson because they weren't immediately brilliant the homework left undone because they couldn't face getting it wrong you're watching a child who is capable bright and interested in the world refusing to engage with any of it unless success is guaranteed and you're starting to wonder if they can't cope with failing at things that don't matter how are they going to cope with the things that do today I'm going to tell you what's actually driving fear of failure in children and give you five ways to close the resilience gap this is the how not to screw up your kids podcast I'm your host Dr Mary Han so pour yourself a cuppa find a comfy seat and enjoy the conversation this episode is about fear of failure why some children won't try anything they might not be good at what's underneath the avoidance and how to help them build the resilience to try anyway now I know that this is something that okay I've given you some examples and it may not present in exactly those same ways but we can see it as parents we can see our child making themselves small avoiding things because that fear of failure might somehow become a character flaw of them and it can be really challenging as a parent because you're sort of stuck between this should I be empathetic and console and really not be pushing them am I causing some damage if I push them too often we oscillate from that to the other extreme which which we sort of feel like my good I need to push them because if I don't push them they're going to keep avoiding things and actually often we just need to understand a what fear of failure actually is and how we can spot it and where it comes from because I think when we understand those foundations we can then look at practical things that we can do and that's the structure that's what I'm going to do for you in this episode and hopefully you'll come away feeling really clear about how it's presenting in your child but also a really practical at least one thing that you can start doing so I guess what I want to start with is what act what is fear of failure actually and I think first of all I want to say what it's not it's not laziness it's not a lack of ambition and it's not actually a character flaw or your child being dramatic or overly dramatic fear of failure is actually in itself a self-protection strategy yeah it's what happens when a child has learned either consciously or otherwise that their worth that who they are their value is tied in some ways to their performance when failing at something feels like it will be evidence that they're not good enough not smart enough not capable enough not popular enough not whatever enough and the most sort of efficient way to avoid that evidence is to never put yourself in a position where you might get it yeah so it's just that hence why we get this avoidance so if I don't try if you don't try you can't fail and if you can't fail you can't provide evidence and prove the thing that you're most afraid of yeah now this is the logic of a child who has developed what psychologist Carol Dweck calls a fixed mindset and I'm sure you have come across this notion of Carol Dweck's work and fixed and growth mindset schools talk about it a lot corporations are really using that in terms of driving change and when we think of a fixed mindset we're talking about a belief that ability is innate and fixed yeah so you're either smart or you're not and Carol uses that that sort of terminology because her work she's American and her work is in a US university but you're you know you're either smart or you're not you're talented you're not you're athletic or and with a fixed mindset effort is risky because let's just think this through if your child if I as a child try hard and I still fail that's almost worse well it is worse than not trying at all because it removes the excuse it confirms the fear so a growth mindset on the opposite on the contrary is the belief that ability develops through effort and practice and this is the one we really want to promote it doesn't eliminate failure but it changes what failure means and how it's interpreted and how it's viewed because in a growth mindset failure is information it's data it's something that you can use it's a step in the process and it means you're working maybe if you're failing at the edge of your ability which is exactly where we want them to be because that's the goal of everything when you listen to this episode is to shift your child from that first mindset fixed towards that second mindset which is growth and that's not going to happen in one conversation it's not going to be in one single intervention or discussion but consistently over time through what you do what you say what you model and crucially what you don't do so that's what this fear of fear of failure is and how we can sort of link it directly to this notion of fixed and growth mindset so how do we spot it how do you spot that in your child yeah because fear of failure doesn't always look like obvious avoidance yeah so here are the patterns that i see most often and there are five of them the first one is that the the kind of the running commentary i can't do it before they've even tried so this if you've got a child who announces failure like i can't do it they've already failed by saying they can't do it before they've even made a single attempt now sometimes this can look a little bit like catastrophizing i'm going to be terrible at this and sometimes it's a flat refusal i'm not doing it either way the function of the statement of i'm going i'm going to be terrible at this or i'm not doing it is the same they're pre-empting failure by refusing to engage with the task at all so that's number one one way you can spot it number two is the perfect or quit pattern so they is this is different they don't refuse but they start things and they start it with great enthusiasm and then abandon them the moment they stop being easy yeah the instrument that starts off passionate and they're really enjoying it and until it becomes harder and then they give up the sport the art the hobby as long as they're better than average with minimal effort they're required the moment they're not immediately brilliant they're done and this is perfectionism doing what perfectionism does making the gap between where you are and where you think you should be feel unbridgeable and that goes back to this idea about the fixed mindset and this innate ability if i'm doing something and it's easy i therefore have this innate capability in that particular task hobby or activity if i'm not good at it therefore i'm not innately good at it and therefore i will i'll avoid it because that might jeopardize how i view myself so the first one is that i can't do it so they're not even trying they've already admitted failure beforehand the second is they start they try enthusiastically but the minute it becomes difficult they stop the third one is homework avoidance or i've forgotten it now often the behavior that brings parents to me is what looks like academic disengagement yeah the child who doesn't hand in homework who says they've lost the sheets who stares at the pages and produces absolutely nothing sometimes this is about attention and executive function but often particularly in children who show up differently at home it's about not being willing to produce work that might be judged found lacking and returned with red marks or annotations or whatever that might look like obviously if you've got a child who is refusing homework or forgetting it and they're neurodiverse in terms of adhd and they're having they have difficulties in terms of organization that's a different thing but it doesn't necessarily mean that they are not susceptible to it we want to rule out that there's a that there's a sort of a scaffolding capability issue as opposed to a view of themselves so number three is about homework avoidance or i've forgotten it number four is intense reactions to mild criticism or mistakes so maybe a gentle correction from a teacher that results in tears a single wrong answer in a game that ends in rage coming second in something and being inconsolable when a child's reaction to not quite right is wildly disproportionate to the situation fear of failure is usually underneath it so the reaction is proportionate so it is disproportionate to the actual task and the skill and where they've come in that particular situation and so i think it's important to think about that as a particular thing but for them the reaction is proportionate to what failure means to them so we've got to kind of slightly get our heads around what feels disproportionate in terms of an outward look and what feels proportionate from an inward, the risk of failure to the child. So that's number four. And number five is comparing themselves unfavorably and constantly. Now, Oscar was 10 when I first met him. He was academically able, socially warm, and by every external measure that we looked at, doing really well. But he couldn't stop measuring himself against the children he perceived as better than him. Better at football, better at maths, better at all the things that in his private internal ranking, for him, for Oscar, mattered. His parents brought him because the comparisons had started affecting his willingness to try things. He decided he wasn't athletic or sporty or capable. He'd decided he wasn't creative. And he was constructing a smaller and smaller version of himself around the things he knew he was safe in and at the reduction of all of the things that he wanted to avoid. Now, where does this fear of failure come from? Because I think if we've spotted, and I'll come back to Oscar, don't worry. If we've seen the five things that we can spot it, it is important to think about before we move on to the strategies, the five strategies I'll share, where might some of this fear of failure come from? And there are three routes. Now, I will caveat this with this is not a blame list. This is just the reality of what shapes a child's relationship with failure. Okay. The first one is praise that's tied to outcomes. So this is the counterintuitive one. One of the most well-documented causes of fear of failure is outcome-focused praise. You're so clever. You're brilliant at that. You're a natural. Now, it sounds affirming. And I have talked often in previous episodes about how I did this with our eldest and did this so often that we then had one particular report situation where it was, you know, rather than the praise coming first, it was then simply like, well, what's my treat? And we realized very, very clearly and thankfully relatively early on that we were reinforcing this outcome-focused praise. Because it sounds affirming. It sounds like the right thing to do. And it is in the short term. But what it inadvertently does is it makes intelligence and talent into fixed attributes, things your child has rather than things that they work on and develop. And once children believe that, they're more likely to start to protect the reputation. If I'm clever, I can't seem to struggle. If I'm a natural, I shouldn't need to try. Because trying and still not getting it would disprove the thing that I've been told who I am. So research by Carol Dweck and her colleagues found that children praised for effort after a task. So do you remember she did lots of these puzzles, were more likely to choose harder tasks to try in subsequent rounds of the puzzles. And they persisted longer, even in the face of difficulty and enjoyed the process more. Children on the opposite side that were praised for effort for their intelligence and that kind of innate capability and you're a natural chose easier tasks, the one where their intelligence would be safely demonstrated. So the praise made them risk averse. And in fact, in one of her, the rounds of the research that Carol Dweck did, the children in both of those sort of the ones who were praised for effort and the ones that were praised for talent were then asked to write back to their classmates about how that they done. And they found that those who had been praised for talent were most likely to be inaccurate and to lie about their results. Because again, it's all about that saving face. This is who I am. And therefore, this is how other people need to see me. So number one, that can be one of the reasons if you're listening to that and thinking, actually, yeah, okay, I can see that we might be doing that, then you'll know where we're going to go when we start looking at the strategies. But the second is about parents who rescue too quickly. You know, I'm a reforming and a work in progress control enthusiast. So I equally fall into this slot too. So when a child struggles with a puzzle, a piece of homework, a game that they're playing, a social interaction, and a parent immediately steps in to solve and rescue them, the child over time inadvertently, it doesn't happen Our children get the message that struggle is a problem to be removed, not an experience to be worked through. Yeah, they never discover what it feels like to push through difficulty and arrive at the other side. And without that experience, failure remains terrifying. Because if you've not experienced it, you've created all sorts of narrative about how awful it might be, you know, because if they've never survived it, they can't imagine themselves being able to do that. So that is number two. Number three is an environment that overvalues performance. Now, this could be in a school, it could be a family, it could be a peer group. But where schools, families or peer groups celebrate results over process, where the question is always, what did you get, rather than what did you learn, where being bright is an identity, rather than a description, children who grow up in these environments often have a very thin relationship with their own effort, because effort has never been what was valued. So those are the three things that you might kind of ponder on. And here are the tools. Now, you might not be able to identify exactly where it comes from. There may not be consistent patterns where that is. But what you can do is now start looking at the tools. And as you know, I say every single time, really focus, listen to all five tools, sit with it and focus on one. And the one that you think will have the most impact on your life. And that's number two. Most impact for your family right now doesn't have to be the first one. But it's just which is going to give you the most impact. Because when we concentrate on one, we are much more likely to be successful than when we try to do multiple at the same time. So tool number one, praise the process and do that specifically. So this is the single most evidence backed change that you can there is so much research that documents this particular strategy as being highly effective. And it's the one that has actually the most immediate effect. So we want to shift our praise from what our children have achieved to how they got there. So instead of you're so clever, you're so talented, you've got this, we want to then say, you kept going, even when that was really hard. That's what got you there. You tried a completely different approach when the first one didn't work. That's exactly what learning looks like. I noticed how much effort you put into that, not the result, the effort. That's the bit that matters. So any language around that, the specificity is important. Good effort is still vague enough to be discounted. I saw you go back and check your answer, even when you were tired, is concrete, it's observable, and impossible to argue with. It also tells your child exactly what you want more of. It's the whole catchphrase, isn't it? Say what you see. And when you're super explicit without the superlatives of, oh, that was amazing. And it's evidence-backed, your child, A, can't argue with it because it's specific. You've named something that they have done that was observable. And B, it's this really crystallizes what the praise is associated with, and is much more likely without a long teachable moment. It's a really quick and easy way for our to also understand what we want more of, where they're likely to get more praise from, because of course, everyone wants praise. So that's tool one. Tool two is normalize failure and use your own stories. Children need to see that failure is survivable, that it happened to people they admire and respect, and that it is a normal part of any life worth living. Now, the most powerful source of evidence is, of course, you. So talk about your failures. Not as confessions, but as stories and not as lectures. So the job you didn't get, the project that didn't work, the skill you found genuinely difficult and had to practice before it clicked. So don't do it in a way that is designed to teach them a lesson because they will literally switch off, but just in a way that makes failure ordinary in the moments where it seems opportune to do it. You know, things like I tried something at work today and that didn't go the way I planned I'll try it differently tomorrow. Or I was rubbish at this when I first learned it. Genuinely rubbish. Here's what it took to get better. When failure is something that happens in your family and it's talked about and it's processed and it's moved through, it loses its power as evidence of inadequacy. It becomes a thing that happens, a step, a turn in the road. And the more that you can almost embed that in the conversations you have, rather than what went well, what didn't go well, and what have you learn from it. That can be a new thing that you do either at the dinner table. or just before you're watching a film that you're all watching together, but just make the discussion of trying something that wasn't easy and what you learned from that as a normal standard part of your conversation. So that's tool two. Tool three is let them struggle and stay. So this is the hardest one, particularly if you're like me, a control enthusiast, because watching your child struggle is physically, viscerally uncomfortable. The urge to step in is biological. However, struggling and discovering that they can get through it is the only way a child builds genuine belief in their own resilience. You cannot build it for them by removing the struggle. You can only build it by being alongside them while they do it themselves. So what staying looks like, for example, this is hard. I can see it's hard. I'm right here. What's one small thing you could try? You don't have to get it right first time. You just have to try something. You're not withholding help. You're withholding rescue. And that is difference. There's a difference. Help is scaffolding. Let's break it down into smaller pieces. Rescue is taking over. Here, I'll do it. One builds capability and capacity. The other removes the need for it. So that's tool three. Tool four. is separate your child from their performance. And this goes deeper than praise, really. It's about the overall message your child is receiving about what their worth, what their value is based on. Children who are afraid of failure have usually, unconsciously, often without anyone intending it, come to believe that success makes them more lovable and failure makes them less. The antidote is making that belief more lovable. The antidote is making that belief explicit and then directly contradicting it. I don't care what score you got. I care how you went about it. You being good at things has nothing to do with how much I love you. I want to be clear about that. You being bad at things also has nothing to do with how much I love you. I just want you to try. Now, it sounds obvious, but for a child in the grip of a fear of failure, it isn't obvious at all. Say it out loud. Say it when things go well. Say it when things go badly. Say it when there's nothing particularly at stake, so it doesn't feel like damage control. Make it part of the texture of how you talk about who they are. And tool number five, celebrate the attempt separately from the outcome. One of the most powerful reframes you can offer a child who is afraid of failure is to change what counts as success. If success is defined as winning, getting it right, being the best, then failure is always a live possibility, yeah? But if success includes trying something you're not sure about, pushing past the I can't moment, staying in something when it gets hard, then failure becomes actually much rarer because the attempt itself is the achievement. That's the tick. That's the accomplishment. That's the success. So things like you went to the tryout, whatever happens next, you showed up. That took guts. You tried something today that you weren't sure about. I'm not even asking how it went. The trying is the thing. Over time, with considered process praise, with normalized failure, with your own stories, with the message that trying is what counts, the internal calculus starts to shift. The child who wouldn't try anything they might fail at starts slowly trying things. Not because failure no longer scares them, but because they've started to believe in their bones that they can, survive it. And that belief is resilience. And it can't be given. It can only be grown through experience. Now, here's what I want to leave you with. Resilience is not the absence of failure. It's not the ability to breeze through difficulty without it touching you. Real resilience, the kind which serves a child throughout their life, is built in the moments when things didn't go right and they stayed. The child who learns to try things they might fail at, and the child who learns to try things they might fail at, and the child who learns to try things they might fail at, and the child who learns becomes the adult who can take the risks that matter. The job application, the relationship, the creative leap, the attempt at something genuinely difficult and genuinely worth doing. That's what we're building. Not a child who always succeeds, a child who knows they can cope when they don't. Now, if this episode has been useful, please take a moment to leave a rating or a review about the podcast, because it genuinely helps other parents find this podcast. And I'll see you in the next episode. And if you know a parent whose child refuses to try anything, maybe send this their way. Thank you so much for listening. I'll see you on Monday. Until next time, failure isn't the opposite of success. It's the path to it. And if you know a parent who refuses to try anything, maybe send this their way.
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