As the teachers (bless their hardworking hearts) delve into their school year focusing on teaching the three R’s, there’s one lesson the schools and probably many of us parents don’t teach our children—at least not intentionally, but should:  how to fail.

Gene Kranz, lead flight director of Mission Control for Apollo 13 uttered those famous words, “Failure is not an option,” but maybe we should rethink that. 

When failure is the result of an effort that didn’t yield the desired result, it’s not always a bad thing.  Especially when you learn from it.  What happens sometimes is that the fear of failing becomes so great, that people develop another fear: fear of trying.

I see that in my kids sometimes, when they are hesitant to try something new, or to go out of their comfort zone.  My daughter, who lives and breathes softball, doesn’t want to try any other sport because she won’t be as good as it as she is at softball.  She doesn’t want to fail.

When one of my son’s plays tennis, he sometimes checks out mentally.  He says he doesn’t care if he wins or loses the match (and he’s my most competitive child in every other realm of life.)   But I think he does that so if he loses, it will hurt less.  He doesn’t want to feel the pain of failing to win.

My kids are not alone, I’m sure. How many kids in math class this year will not raise their hand because they don’t want to risk failing to give the correct answer?

Thomas Edison is often quoted as saying that although he tried 1000 times to make a light bulb, he didn’t view his lack of success as a failure. Instead, he discovered 1000 ways NOT to make a light bulb.

It’s not easy to go out in today’s competitive world and say—I think I’m going to fail today.  Think about when we miss seeing a game or contest, but want to know the result.  First words out of our mouths?  Who won?  What was the score?

The emphasis is clearly on the end result, not the process. 

Now, to be clear, my desire for kids to fail is based on three defined components:  that they really tried in the first place, that they learn from the failure, and that they learn quickly. So when a genuine effort is made, an acknowledgement of the mistakes and a desire to understand them is there, this is a good failure.

In other words, not doing homework or projects for the semester and getting a failing grade is still not okay.  (My little angels know which one(s) of them I’m talking to.)

So this school year, instead of first zooming in on the red X’s on the test paper, with an interrogation of why they got something wrong, maybe I should first ask—how did you approach this problem or what did you figure out about it—instead of just what’s the right answer?

I’ll keep encouraging my kids to try something new—maybe they’ll discover an ability that develops only after they’ve stuck with it a while.

But to counter all of the “no fail” lessons they’ve been exposed to, it will take more than “do as I say”.  They’ll have to see me take the risks too. 

So when the end of season parent/child softball game is played, I’m sure I’ll discover at least 1000 ways not to hit the big yellow ball.