Lessons Through Failure

In a recent Education Week article, a college admission director wrote about how he tries to dig deeper into applicant files "to find out who the students really are outside of their trophies, medals, and test scores."

He particularly likes when applicants describe a significant failure and how they dealt with it.

"It's so rare to hear stories of defeat and triumph that when we do, we cheer. If their perspectives are of lessons learned or challenges overcome, these applicants tend to jump to the top of the heap at highly selective collesge. We believe an error in high school should not define the rest of your life, but how you respond could shape you forever...Failure is about growth, learning, overcoming, and moving on. Let's allow young people to fail."

Let's allow young people to fail is not a part of any school's mission statement, but perhaps it should be.

Now that my kids are 24 and 21, I see the important lessons they've learned dealt more with adversity and challenge than with successes.

I have said many times that a parent is only as old as their oldest child. As your eldest child is growing up, it's tough to resist coming to your his/her rescue whenever he/she hits a bump in the road, no matter how small. We want the best for our children and with our oldest we are experiencing these rites of passage for the first time; we may have experienced them personally as children but that's different from the vicarious experience as parents.

I remember how nervous my wife and I were when my oldest was a high school senior and applying to college. While he was a solid student, we irrationally worried if he would even get into college.  We encouraged him to apply to more colleges than any reasonable person should. Two years later when our younger one was a high school senior, we were more relaxed and left the college selection and application process up to him, and he only applied to a few colleges.

In addition to being more involved in your oldest child's life, parents also worry that our kids' development as a student and as a person should be a smooth, continuous ascent. We worry that any hiccup might be an sign that our child is headed for trouble and has permanently deviated from the path of success. When one of my kids was in 6th grade, he failed a math test and my wife, a high school math teacher, was sure this was the beginning of the end for our son. The reality was he was beginning to test limits--as all adolescents do; he wondered if he needed to study for this test, tested his hypothesis by not studying, and--based on the result--learned an important lesson: for him, studying for a test was important.

Our kids' development will come from many disappointments:  not making a sports team, not being a straight A student, not getting the lead in the school play, not understanding a concept in class, not being in the right social group. I know it's difficult for parents to resist coming to their child's rescue--and there are certainly times when they'll need to--yet parents should be cautious about getting overly-involved with issues and disappointments that will actually help their child grow, problem-solve, and gain self-confidence--and even provide them with a great topic for their college application essay.