The Big F Word
As the plane of the end of the year is about to land and learners hustle to complete projects and earn final badges I think this is the perfect time to remind ourselves about the BIG F word, failure. The word failure often has a negative connotation and today I’d like to invite you to redefine and embrace this word with fresh eyes. Education hero Carol Dweck shared “failure is information—we label it failure, but it’s more like, ‘This didn’t work, I’m a problem solver, and I’ll try something else.’” If failure is information then it isn’t bad or good, it simply is a tool.
At Acton we lean in to the process of learning to do regularly and we repeat the saying fail hard, fail often, fail cheaply. As a parent the failure of our child to not earn a badge, or failing to make a friend, or failing their test at swim lessons can be tough. As a parent myself I have experienced the other f words fear and frenzy of feelings when my daughter or son come up short and are faced with failure. It is in these moments that we parents encounter the Monster of Fear most, we worry “will my child be successful, will they learn, will they love, will they try again?” Although these are natural feelings, these feelings don’t help, they instead complicate and tend to get in the way of our child’s journey. With the frenzy we parents often move to rescue, persecute, or meddle too much that we steal the journey from our child. If failure instead is seen as a tool rather than a definitive label failure is the beautiful moment we wait for, the moment of growth!
Here’s my call to action for us parents as our community lands the plane of the end of the session and the end of a long school year. If you tend to obsess over measurement (because this is what you know and gives you comfort) and you feel a frenzy of worry over your child’s achievement or lack there of I encourage you to instead focus on the following:
Reflect —find a moment when your child is ready and ask questions about what worked and what they might do differently (ideas of time travel helps land this talk)
Instead of focusing on the micro think of the macro. Does your child have friends at school, do they feel joy, have they made progress in a job, a material, in their communication, in their mindset? This is where we love, this is NOT a failure and is instead a win!
Love —support your child with empathy. If they share their disappointment do not rescue them or assure them that next time will work out. Simply hold space with them and love.
Just as failure is essential to the pursuit of passion for our learners, we are learners too and failure is essential to the journey of parenting. When in the dip perhaps you use the other tool we use often at Acton, the tool of reflection. Is it more important to parent how you grew up or parent how you wish you were offered? What fails have you made this year with your child? What have you learned? How have you grown as a parent this year?
Besides the big F of failure there are other F words that are equally as important such as family, friendship, and fun. When times are hard and failure seems heavy to bear I encourage you to simply do less and lean in to these f words. This doesn’t mean be absent, this just means take the “you” out of it for a moment so you can do the best word of all, LOVE. Simply love your child and their beautiful shining eyes! It will be in this moment that you will develop the other magical F word, fulfillment of parenting. It may feel too simple yet here’s my motto “when in doubt, love.”
If you need greater proof, here is a Launchpad (high school) learner’s speech about the importance of failure.