Picture This:
It’s Thursday evening, you’re finally relaxing after a long and hectic week. You’re lounging in bed with a freshly poured glass of wine on your nightstand and Grey’s Anatomy on your television. Suddenly, your bedroom door whips open and in storms your daughter. She’s in a panic, shaking, and visibly sweating. You jump up, nervous that something is really wrong. “Mom, mom, mom, mom!!” she yells, almost at a shriek. “What is it?!” Your head fills with endless awful possibilities. “My science fair project! It’s due tomorrow. I totally forgot. Why didn’t you remind me!!!!!!?!!” Your heart sinks. This is not your first time at the forgotten assignment rodeo.
Your daughter continues, “Mom, please! It’s only 9:15, if we leave now we can still make it to the store on time and I can get it done.” You want to help, it’s your natural inclination to come to your daughter’s rescue; but after the Shakespeare project last month and the social studies paper the month before, you decide you have to put your foot down. “I’m sorry, but no. You always do this. The project was assigned over a month ago. You had plenty of time to do it!” Your daughter’s facial expression changes. She looks like a deer in headlights, “If I don’t do it though, I am going to get a D in the class!!” A D on her transcript you think? What would colleges think? Would she even get into college? Suddenly you have a mental image of her being 45, living in your basement, as you pester her about job interviews. Before you can shake the thought you grab your keys and are out the door on the way to the store.
You stay up with her until 2 am. The next morning, you yawn over your third cup of coffee. Exhausted, she thanks you for your help and “swears it will never happen again,” but you know that’s not the end of it. Despite the last minute fiasco and complete lack of sleep, your daughter presents her project and receives an A. Her inability to plan ahead and prepare for a long-term project becomes a family secret. But what happens when she goes to college? What happens when she gets a job? What are the long-term effects of not letting our children fail?
What the Research Says about Student Success:
The question above is one that has been frequently studied by social scientists and psychologists alike. The newest research on the topic suggests a few things: 1. Kids who have experienced failure are more likely to have a higher resiliency; 2. To foster this resiliency, kids need to understand how to bounce back after failing; 3. Kids who have a higher resiliency or Grit are more likely to be successful.
In an earlier blog, I discussed what the research says about helicopter parents. However, social scientists have coined the new term, “lawnmower parents” to describe a sect of helicopter parents who “attempt to smooth out and mow down all obstacles.” Research conducted by Wendy Grolnick, found that parents who are oriented towards control rather than supporting self-sufficiency in their children often raise children who fail to develop autonomous motivation academically.
The topic of autonomous academic motivation is an up and coming topic in the field of education. We do know that students who are intrinsically motivated rather than extrinsically (meaning they do it for themselves rather than to please others) are more likely to reach long-term success. We also know, thanks to Dr. Carol Dweck’s research on mindset, that students who have a ‘growth mindset’, or believe that intelligence and success are not fixed traits but things that needs to be practiced and developed, are more likely to be successful academically and in the long-term than those with ‘fixed mindsets’.
A recent study published by the American Psychological Association, looked at 111 school children ages 11 and 12. They were given a problem too difficult for any to solve. After attempting the problem, the researchers divided the group into two. The first group was simply asked how they attempted to solve the problem. The second group discussed that failure happens frequently in learning and it is important to keep trying. The second group, scored much higher on a later test than those who did not receive the pep talk. Researchers on the project said, “fear of failing can hijack the working memory resources, a core component of intellectual abilities. Fear of failing not only hampers performance, it can also lead students to avoid difficulty and therefore the opportunities to develop new skills. Because difficulty is inherent to most academic tasks, our goal was to create a safer performance environment where experiencing difficulty would not be associated with lower ability.”
As the topic becomes more popular and psychologists and scientists alike are publishing their findings one thing is becoming apparent: students cannot eternally avoid failure and those who know how to handle failure do best academically and in life.
Stay tuned for some tips on how to fight the parental instinct and let kids fail when appropriate.