I became a parent and a secondary school teacher in the same year, and these twin roles have shaped the way I've raised my children and educated my students. During my first decade raising two boys and teaching hundreds of children, I began to feel a creeping sense of unease, a suspicion that something was rotten in the state of my parenting. But it was only when my elder child started secondary school that my worlds collided and the source of the problem became clear to me: today's overprotective, failure-avoidant parenting style has undermined the competence, independence and academic potential of an entire generation.
From my vantage point at the front of a classroom, I'd long viewed myself as part of the solution, a champion of my students' intellectual and emotional bravery. However, as the same caution and fear I witnessed in my students began to show up in my own children's lives, I had to admit that I was part of the problem, too.
I am as guilty as the next parent; I have inadvertently extended my children's dependence in order to feel good about my parenting. Every time I pack my child's lunch for him or drive his forgotten homework to school, I am rewarded with tangible proof of my conscientious mothering. I love, therefore I provide. I provide, therefore I love. While I know, somewhere in the back of my mind, that my children really should be doing these kinds of tasks for themselves, it makes me feel good to give them these small displays of my deep, unconditional love.
The day I finally came to terms with my over-parenting, I was determined to start making amends at home with my own children. I needed to do something immediate, something symbolic, and I knew just where to start. My younger son, then aged nine, had never learned to tie his shoes. I blamed this oversight on the invention of Velcro and his preference for slip-on shoes, but if I'm completely honest, I knew I was falling down on the job. He freaked out when I mentioned the situation, even in my most enthusiastic "Won't this be a fun project we can do together?" voice. He got frustrated with my instruction, I got frustrated with his helplessness, and the entire endeavour dissolved into anger and tears. When I began to look closely at the source of his issue with the shoelaces, I realised that what he was feeling – the frustration and helplessness – was my fault, not his.
For every time I tied his shoes, rather than teaching him to do it himself, I reinforced his perception that I believed the task was too hard for him. One day before school, when he'd left his Velcro shoes at a friend's house and had to wear the back-up pair with laces, he said he'd rather wear his wellington boots than try to tie his shoes. He didn't even care that wearing boots meant he'd have to sit out PE. My son was so convinced of his inability that he was willing to forfeit an hour of games with his friends.
So that afternoon, I took out his back-up trainers, and prepared to remedy the situation. Over a snack, I told him I'd made a mistake and that I thought I'd figured out how to be a better mum. I empathised with his worry and told him that while the task might be hard for him at first, with some effort and perseverance, I knew he could conquer it. I was so confident he would, that we were going to stick with it until he mastered those darn shoelaces. In less than an hour, the embarrassment he'd felt about being the only child in his year who could not tie his shoes was gone. He had succeeded and I've hardly ever seen him so proud of himself. All it took was a little time, a little faith in each other, and the patience to work through the tangle of knots and loops.
No, it’s not always going to be this simple. Lumpy knots and uneven shoelaces give way in the blink of an eye to flawed university dissertations and botched job interviews, and there's only so much time available to instill confidence and resilience in our children. The work begins the first moment our babies fail to grasp a toy, or fall as they toddle across the room, and continues until they head out into their own lives.
It's up to us. Parents have the power to grant this freedom to fail. Teachers have the ability to transform that failure into an education. And together? Together, we have the potential to nurture a generation of confident, competent adults.
This is an adapted extract from The Gift of Failure: How the Best Parents Learn to Let Go So Their Children Can Succeed, published by HarperCollins