Are you preparing your children for failure?

It’s been proven, time and time again, that one of the key factors for success is persistence: and that applies whether you are striving for success in school, in business, or in any other aspect of your life. Yet so many parents I see are teaching their children that persistence is unimportant; it is talent or luck that determines success. This comes about largely because we let our children out of doing things that require determination and persistence.

I had a student who needed to learn French to be able to sing a particular song she wanted to learn. Her mother took one glance at the material and immediately said, “Wow, that will be hard, won’t it?” What lesson was she teaching her daughter? First, that learning something new will be hard. Second, to assume that something is hard before you get into it. She was setting her daughter up to fail before her daughter had even started!

But what is worse than that, is parents who allow their children to get into an activity, and then as soon as it gets hard, or boring, allow them to quit. Edison tested thousands of materials before he found what would be successful for a light bulb. And I know many people who started to write articles online and wrote three or four, and when they did not make any money right away, quit. However, those of us who are determined and persistent, and write every day, make money consistently. And it is because we write every day, and do all the boring work that is required to make our articles place well in search engines and drive traffic.

So please, teach your children to succeed, rather than fail. Show an example of hard work and a refusal to give up, and ask that they do the same. Otherwise, we are doomed to a nation of dilettantes, flitting from one career to the next, and failing at all of them.