Help Your Children Deal With Failure

Failure is a terrible thing. Failure in school just teaches a kid to expect failure and this sets him up for a life of failure. When a child tries again and again to succeed in school and the bad grades stay, the child is sometimes allowed to fall into a pattern of low self-esteem. If kids are subjected to a pattern of failure do not be shocked to find her afraid to try out for soccer or him for orchestra. Many children are taught to reason that because of one failure there were automatically be failure in everything else that they should attempt. There are a few things that will instill in a child that they are not failures.

Never tell your child that she is stupid or allow her to call herself stupid. Enforce positive learning behaviors, even if they cannot write or down or give specific details, compliment them for understanding the concepts. Also compliment her when she formulates a remark that is correct in a minor situation. You may give them positive reinforcement should they notice the right brand of cereal. Something like, "Oh! I hadn't even noticed the Rice Crunch Cereal, thanks for telling me!"

Keep tabs of your child. No one knows him better than you do (perhaps not even himself)! It is helpful to find out if your child learns best visually, kinesthetically, or audibly. Many kids need to touch something to understand it. So, to teach a child fractions, for instance, show them a pie and cut it into slices. You may have 1/8 if you can tell me what size an eighth is. The actual physical touching of the pie may help a child to understand an idea better. Or he may need to write things down to learn them, help him with his note taking skills. It is quite possible that poor grades can be best explained by the learning environment which is usually mostly auditory.

You are well with in your bounds to contact anyone who can help your child, their teacher, the baby sitter, a tutor. Explain to them your individual child's needs and ask if it is possible for the teacher to add more of that type of instruction into class. It is worth a shot and can dramatically help your child's grades and self esteem.