#96 "The Power of Failure: If you don't want them to keep score-don't teach them to count"

Parenting Teens: Advice Redefined for Today's Complex World

Cheryl Pankhurst Rating 0 (0) (0)
https://podopshost.com/podcast/2138/dashboard Launched: Jun 06, 2025
support@cherylpankhurst.com Season: 1 Episode: 96
Directories
Subscribe

Parenting Teens: Advice Redefined for Today's Complex World
#96 "The Power of Failure: If you don't want them to keep score-don't teach them to count"
Jun 06, 2025, Season 1, Episode 96
Cheryl Pankhurst
Episode Summary

Call to Action: If you found this episode helpful, please share it with other parents who might benefit from this perspective. Don't forget to subscribe to our podcast for more insightful discussions on parenting teens in today's complex world. Join our community on Facebook and share your thoughts and experiences with us. Let's support each other in raising resilient and empowered teens!

 #ParentingTeens #EmbraceFailure #GrowthMindset #ResilientTeens #ParentingAdvice #TeenDevelopment #LifeSkills #EmpowerTeens #WTFPodcast #WelcomeToFriday

SHARE EPISODE
SUBSCRIBE
Episode Chapters
Parenting Teens: Advice Redefined for Today's Complex World
#96 "The Power of Failure: If you don't want them to keep score-don't teach them to count"
Please wait...
00:00:00 |

Call to Action: If you found this episode helpful, please share it with other parents who might benefit from this perspective. Don't forget to subscribe to our podcast for more insightful discussions on parenting teens in today's complex world. Join our community on Facebook and share your thoughts and experiences with us. Let's support each other in raising resilient and empowered teens!

 #ParentingTeens #EmbraceFailure #GrowthMindset #ResilientTeens #ParentingAdvice #TeenDevelopment #LifeSkills #EmpowerTeens #WTFPodcast #WelcomeToFriday

#ParentingTeens #EmbraceFailure #GrowthMindset #ResilientTeens #ParentingAdvice #TeenDevelopment #LifeSkills #EmpowerTeens #WTFPodcast #WelcomeToFriday

Welcome to another episode of WTF: Welcome to Friday, the spinoff series from Parenting Teens Advice Redefined for today's complex world. In this episode, we dive deep into the concept of failure and its crucial role in our kids' development. Are you a parent who shields your child from failure, or do you see it as a valuable learning opportunity? Discover how allowing your teens to experience failure can equip them with essential life skills, resilience, and the ability to bounce back stronger. Learn how to transform failure into data, remove the emotional stigma, and empower your teens to take ownership of their actions. Join us as we explore real-life stories, practical advice, and the importance of celebrating successes after setbacks. Let's redefine failure as a stepping stone to success!

 

Speaker 1
00:04 - 00:19
Welcome to another episode of WTF. Welcome to Friday. And it's the spinoff series from Parenting Teens Advice Redefined for today's complex world. I'm so glad you're all here.

Speaker 1
00:19 - 00:25
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And today's episode is going to be all about failure.

Speaker 1
00:26 - 00:50
And I want to know if you are the parent who is signing up for the organized sports for our little kids where they don't keep score, there's no winners, there's no losers. I'm going to give you a little spoiler alert. We taught them how to count. We teach them math.

Speaker 1
00:50 - 00:58
So I'm pretty sure you're not fooling anyone when it comes to these things. We need to have winners and losers in sports. That's what it's all about. That's how we learn.

Speaker 1
00:59 - 01:40
And I'll tell you something. What if. What if, let me see here, I'm gonna, so WTF means there is no editing, and it's totally uncut, and so we are just gonna keep on keeping on. So when we're talking about allowing our kids to fail.

Speaker 1
01:41 - 02:06
I want to say this, I want to say that what if your kids secretly thought that you had no faith in them? because you just keep diving in and fixing the problem and covering it up and giving them the band-aid because you feel bad. We don't want our kids to feel hurt. We don't want them to feel like they failed.

Speaker 1
02:07 - 02:17
But what if failure was just data? What if we were able to say to our kids, ah, that's OK. You know what? Yeah, that did not go well.

Speaker 1
02:17 - 02:28
But it's data. It's telling us what do we need to do next, what we're not going to do next, and how do we learn from this. That's all it is. And it starts from when they're little.

Speaker 1
02:28 - 02:44
When our kids are little and they're learning how to walk and they fall for the first time, do we say, oh, never mind. You're never going to learn how to walk. Or they got on their bike, and they wipe out on their little tricycle. Are you going to say, oh, yeah, you know what?

Speaker 1
02:44 - 02:49
Let's just put the bike in the garage. You're never going to learn how to. Of course not. That's ridiculous.

Speaker 1
02:50 - 03:01
So why can't we look at these things at all failures? Not winning the game, not winning the race. How does it feel to just do your best? What if they spill something?

Speaker 1
03:01 - 03:13
Well, what can we do differently next time? And how are you going to clean that up? How are you going to clean that mess up? If you got the wrong answer, what do we do to get the right answer?

Speaker 1
03:13 - 03:23
If you're not chosen or you're not included in something, well, how does it feel when you feel left out? Well, you know what? Maybe you're not left out. Maybe it just didn't work this time.

Speaker 1
03:25 - 03:45
You know, I feel like we start really jumping in at very young ages to fix our kids' failures. And the only thing that tells them is that we don't have faith in them to fix their own failures. And again, it's not failure. It's a lesson.

Speaker 1
03:45 - 03:57
It's data. It's something that we need to do next time. What can we learn next time? If your kid is failing a test at school, high school, you've got teens now, and they fail the test.

Speaker 1
03:58 - 04:07
Well, why do you think you failed? What can you do differently? Put it right back on them. We're not gonna say, well, I told you to study.

Speaker 1
04:07 - 04:13
I told you you didn't do this. I told you you didn't do that. You went out with your friends, you decided. None of that, that doesn't help.

Speaker 1
04:13 - 04:20
It's not helpful. We're gonna turn it back to them. Give it, hand it back to them. Okay, that was the mark.

Speaker 1
04:20 - 04:28
That's okay, that was the mark. Are you happy about that? What can you do differently? What's gonna happen next time?

Speaker 1
04:30 - 04:34
Are you going to get to rewrite it? Maybe not. Maybe that's your mark. Maybe that's your mark.

Speaker 1
04:35 - 04:54
But in my experience teaching, many, many parents would come to the school and insist on a rewrite, or they weren't feeling well, or things weren't going well at home, or you know what? they didn't get a great mark. That's just the way it is. And how do we move forward?

Speaker 1
04:54 - 05:10
How do we pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off and get back in the ring? Like we don't need to be dwelling on a mark or dwelling on something insignificant as a mark. And you know what? It might even be a significant mark, but it's still on them.

Speaker 1
05:11 - 05:21
If they are rejected from something, if they're cut from a team, how do we, how do we help them through that? Okay. I know. I understand that sucks.

Speaker 1
05:21 - 05:39
That sucks. We can totally empathize with them. That sucks. And we can even add in, I remember when I, got rejected here, or when I screwed this up, or when I didn't do well on this, we can totally add in our own stories and be vulnerable.

Speaker 1
05:40 - 05:49
Yeah, I failed here too, but you know what? It's the way it is. You know what I learned from it? I learned I'm gonna do this, I learned I'm gonna do this, and learned I don't want this.

Speaker 1
05:49 - 06:07
I learned I do want this. Like how helpful is that? You know what happens is when we start diving in and fixing things for our kids. We would have parents coming in and teacher shopping, like literally teacher shopping.

Speaker 1
06:08 - 06:25
Oh, my neighbor's friend's daughter's cousin had this teacher, and we don't want that teacher for math this year. We want this teacher. Well, guess what? What skill are you teaching your kid by fixing who their teacher is in the class?

Speaker 1
06:26 - 06:38
They might not be a great teacher. They might be the most amazing teacher your kid will ever have. And they might not be the best teacher. But what's going to happen when your kid goes to a part-time job, their first part-time job?

Speaker 1
06:38 - 06:47
They don't like their supervisor. What's going to happen with their supervisor? You're going to go in and have a meeting with their supervisor because they don't like them. That's not happening.

Speaker 1
06:47 - 07:06
Instead, we're giving them the skills to deal with everybody, to manage their emotions and manage how they work with everybody. They're going to deal with different personalities their whole life. If we're diving in and fixing these things, I don't understand how they're going to learn from that. They're not going to learn from that.

Speaker 1
07:07 - 07:40
They're going to, figure out that somehow, some way, someone is going to go in and fix that for them. It's not going to happen. What happens if they get to university or they get to college and they fail their first test, but they have no idea from the first 20 years of their life how to fail that test, how to go to the Prof and ask for extra help how to figure out maybe I didn't study enough.

Speaker 1
07:40 - 08:09
Maybe I need different study skills But if they don't know how to do that if they don't have the small skills that you have built up over the years This is gonna like be a catastrophe for them If they fail a course they're in university and they fail a course it's a catastrophe as opposed to oh I Okay, what did I learn from this? Well, I learned that I partied a little too much. I learned that I didn't get enough sleep.

Speaker 1
08:09 - 08:18
I learned that this is actually not a subject I liked. I picked this because all my friends did. I learned those are the conversations. Give it right back to them.

Speaker 1
08:19 - 08:31
What did you learn? What's the data here? If we put it into data and get rid of the emotion, it's just factual. They don't have to put a story to it.

Speaker 1
08:31 - 08:39
Some of our kids, if I fail a test, it's the story they put to failing the test. It's the story they have. Oh, I'm a loser. I'll never do this.

Speaker 1
08:39 - 08:46
I can never do well. That's just a story. The fact is, you failed the test. What do we do next?

Speaker 1
08:46 - 08:54
What do we factor in next? What's the data we have here? Well, here's the whole section I failed on. Maybe that's where I need some extra help.

Speaker 1
08:54 - 09:03
Maybe that's where I need to study. Maybe that's where I just need to not go and party so much. It's just factoring things in. It's removing the emotion.

Speaker 1
09:03 - 09:52
And sharing the stories that we have when we fail is so vitally important because it puts the human element Into our lives and they can I don't know have a little more attachment have a little more connection and The whole point is oh my gosh Perfection is an illusion. We're all gonna fail. We're all gonna find these things where we need to learn from and Just by allowing our kids To know that this is just part of life we can Allow them to take ownership and then we can always say you know what I've got faith in you You can

Speaker 1
09:52 - 10:00
fix this. What are you gonna do? I got your back. I'm right here But you need to take the first step.

Speaker 1
10:00 - 10:15
What are you gonna do to fix this? What are you gonna do to repair this? How much ownership are you gonna take in this? Now that's when you say and you know what a total faith in that you can recover from this.

Speaker 1
10:16 - 10:54
I have total faith you know how to fix this and you know how to go back or you know how to move forward and fix this. You know we have kids that are going into university and if you look at the stats they are suffering from major depression. Kids are dropping out of university left right and center because they don't have the skills to fail, to make a mistake because their parents, the helicopter parents have been like hovering over them for 18 years and diving in and fixing things because they don't want them to be hurt.

Speaker 1
10:55 - 11:00
Listen, it's part of life. We're going to get hurt. We're going to fail. Listen, you know what?

Speaker 1
11:00 - 11:18
When I was 40 years old, I decided I was going to play hockey. I watched the Oshawa generals and I thought I could do that. No problem. And then I bought all the equipment, and I got on the ice, and I was the worst friggin hockey player on the face of the planet.

Speaker 1
11:19 - 11:27
And my dad even came to watch this. Imagine how embarrassing that was for him. I think he was burying his head in his jacket. I was terrible.

Speaker 1
11:28 - 11:34
People were flying past me and flying past me. And I thought, I was such a hero. I want to play. I'm 40 years old.

Speaker 1
11:34 - 11:39
I can play hockey. I'm a strong one. Fail, fail. What did I learn from it?

Speaker 1
11:39 - 11:53
I learned that you can't just jump on the ice with skates and think you know how to play hockey because you watch the Oshawa generals, first of all. And second of all, Did I love it? No. That was data.

Speaker 1
11:53 - 12:02
That was the data that said to me, you love watching hockey. You don't love playing hockey. And was I embarrassed? Damn right, I was embarrassed.

Speaker 1
12:02 - 12:10
I was humiliated. But did I learn from it? Yes, I did. And we, those are the stories I would tell my kids.

Speaker 1
12:10 - 12:23
Listen, I know you tried it for soccer and I know you ran in the wrong direction and I know you didn't score any goals, but you know what? Look what your mom did. And here's how I felt. We all fail.

Speaker 1
12:23 - 12:41
It's just data. So Let your kids fail for the love of gosh, let your kids fail. And the first thing you need to say, the first thing I would suggest you say is, listen, I got faith in you. You can fix this.

Speaker 1
12:42 - 13:02
You can move forward. No matter how hard it is, the harder the problem, the better you're going to come out on the other end and then celebrate it. Don't forget to celebrate it when they come out on the other side. High five, celebration, dinner out, whatever it is.

Speaker 1
13:03 - 13:15
Notice it. And when they do fail, you can always go back to, remember that last time? Remember when you didn't get picked for the team? Remember how you came out of it?

Speaker 1
13:15 - 13:22
Remember how you failed here? Remember what you did to come out of it? Remind them. Remind them of all the successes.

Speaker 1
13:22 - 13:35
Because when we're in the depth of it, and we all get in the deep, dark depth of, I don't know how I can move forward. I don't know where I am. I don't know what I did. We forget all of our wins.

Speaker 1
13:36 - 13:57
we forget all the little things and the big things we've done in the past. And sometimes as parents, we just need to keep reminding our kids because then when we're not around for the big failures, they will remember, Oh yeah, but remember when I did this, I got this, this sucks. I hate it. And we can empathize with that buddy.

Speaker 1
13:58 - 14:05
I know this sucks. I hate that you are feeling this way. What are you going to do? What are you going to do?

Speaker 1
14:06 - 14:14
You don't let them fail. I thank you for joining me. Thank you for being on Facebook. Thank you for joining me on WTF.

Speaker 1
14:14 - 14:18
Welcome to Friday and I will see you next week.

Give Ratings
0
Out of 5
0 Ratings
(0)
(0)
(0)
(0)
(0)
Comments:
Share On
Follow Us
All content © Parenting Teens: Advice Redefined for Today's Complex World. Interested in podcasting? Learn how you can start a podcast with PodOps. Podcast hosting by PodOps Hosting.