Could protecting our children from failure be doing them more harm than good?
From childhood prodigies to Harry Kane's long road to the Ballon d'Or, why learning to lose might be one of the greatest advantages we can give our children.
There's nothing quite like watching your child lose to bring out your inner defence lawyer. The referee was clearly biased, the teacher overlooked their potential, and frankly, the whole competition was questionable from the start. Anything to soften the blow of seeing your child come second. Or third. Or, heaven forbid, last.
“Being brilliant at ten is lovely. Knowing how to pick yourself up when you’re not might prove considerably more useful.”
As parents, we spend years teaching our children to accept the word 'no'. They can't have another biscuit, stay up until midnight or expect the world to rearrange itself around their wishes. Yet when it comes to failure, our resolve has a curious habit of disappearing. Suddenly we're negotiating outcomes, questioning decisions and searching for ways to make the disappointment go away. Nobody wants to watch their child struggle, but in our determination to give them the happiest possible childhood, are we overlooking one of the most valuable lessons growing up has to offer?
Learning to fail isn't simply about losing gracefully. It's about picking yourself up, understanding what went wrong and finding another way forward. Determination, adaptability and mental resilience can be every bit as valuable as natural talent. But children need opportunities to develop them, and that means occasionally allowing things not to go their way.
The Problem With Being Brilliant at Ten
We're rather obsessed with exceptional children. The ten-year-old mathematical genius, the miniature Mozart, the sporting sensation apparently destined for greatness before they've finished primary school. We marvel at their abilities and quietly wonder whether our own children should be doing something more ambitious with their Saturday mornings. But being brilliant at ten doesn't guarantee brilliance at thirty. Nor does being distinctly average rule it out.
A major review published in Science in December 2025 examined the development of nearly 35,000 high achievers across sport, science, classical music and chess. Its findings make rather uncomfortable reading for anyone convinced they've identified the next sporting superstar at under-11s level. Exceptional young performers and those who eventually reached the very top as adults were largely different groups, with eventual world-class performers often developing more gradually and exploring a wider range of interests.
Another review, involving more than 13,000 athletes, found that junior sporting performance explained just 2.2% of the variation in adult performance. That's a remarkably small return on all those Saturday mornings spent discussing which ten-year-old is going professional. Harry Kane's recent Ballon d'Or victory offers a timely illustration. At 33, the England captain reflected on the setbacks, difficult loan spells and years of hard work that preceded his success. His career wasn't an uninterrupted procession of trophies and applause. He had to prove himself repeatedly, often when the path ahead looked anything but certain. It's worth remembering the next time your child doesn't make the team, struggles with algebra or comes home without a certificate. Their potential isn't decided by a disappointing afternoon.
There's also a less celebrated side to being labelled gifted. Imagine breezing through primary school, collecting top marks and being repeatedly told how clever you are. Then, somewhere around adolescence, the work gets harder. Suddenly you're not the brightest person in the room, and success requires something you've never really had to practise: struggling. For some children, that can be deeply unsettling. When being exceptionally talented becomes part of your identity, encountering difficulty can feel like losing the very thing that makes you special.
A 2025 study published in Gifted Child Quarterly found that perfectionistic expectations among gifted teenagers were associated with increased stress and burnout. Psychologist Carol Dweck's research also found that children praised for intelligence were less persistent after failure than those praised for effort. Being gifted isn't a disadvantage, of course, but constantly needing to prove you're gifted can become an exhausting business.
There's a potentially bigger consequence to fearing failure: you might eventually stop trying things you aren't already good at. Why audition for the school play if you might not get the part? Why attempt a difficult subject when an easier one guarantees a good grade? It's much more comfortable to remain safely accomplished than risk being a complete beginner. That reluctance can follow children into adulthood, when the teenager who won't risk rejection may never pursue an ambition, and the adult who needs certainty before making a decision might never change careers, launch a business or discover what they're capable of.
Plenty of successful entrepreneurs have a failed venture or two behind them. The difference isn't that they somehow avoided making mistakes; it's that they were willing to learn from them and take another chance. Failure doesn't automatically lead to success, but being too frightened of it can prevent us from finding out what's possible. We don't all need to peak in our teens or twenties, either. Vera Wang entered fashion design at 40, while James Dyson spent years developing thousands of unsuccessful prototypes before perfecting his bagless vacuum cleaner. Their achievements didn't arrive on anyone else's timetable.
For children growing up surrounded by expectations to achieve early, that's a useful reminder. Natural ability may provide an advantage, but progress rarely follows a straight line. Sometimes it takes years of practice, several changes of direction and the willingness to begin again. If we constantly cushion children from disappointment, we may be making those inevitable setbacks feel far more frightening than they need to be. A child who has never had to navigate losing, rejection or making mistakes has had fewer opportunities to discover that these experiences are survivable.
How To Help Your Child Pick Themselves Up After Failure
Allowing children to experience disappointment doesn't mean leaving them to cope with it alone. The aim is to give them the confidence to manage setbacks, knowing they have someone firmly in their corner. And while every child responds differently, there are ways to help without immediately stepping in to fix everything.
Let Them Be Disappointed
When your child comes home devastated after not making the team, resist the urge to explain why it doesn't matter. To them, it matters enormously. Acknowledge their frustration, sadness or embarrassment before trying to find a positive. Sometimes they need a hug, a sympathetic ear and an evening in which nobody mentions the word 'resilience'. The lessons can wait until the emotions have settled.
Don't Fight Every Battle For Them
Before questioning the coach's decision or emailing the teacher, consider whether something genuinely unfair has happened or whether your child has simply experienced an outcome they didn't want. Bullying, discrimination and genuine harm require intervention. But not being selected isn't automatically an injustice. Children need opportunities to handle manageable disappointments while knowing you're there if they need help.
Help Them Find The Lesson
Once they're ready, encourage your child to reflect. What went well? What might they do differently next time? Would more practice help, or is there another approach worth trying? Avoid turning the conversation into a performance review conducted by an overenthusiastic middle manager. The point is to help them see setbacks as useful information rather than evidence that they're incapable.
Celebrate Progress, Not Just Results
Recognise determination, curiosity and improvement alongside achievement. Encourage children to try things they might not be naturally good at, whether that's the academic child attempting a new sport or the talented musician picking up a paintbrush. Being a beginner teaches children that they don't have to excel immediately to enjoy something. And while hard work matters, so does learning when to change strategy, seek guidance or try a different approach.
Let Them See You Fail
Children don't always see the rejected applications, mistakes at work or abandoned plans behind adult success. Share age-appropriate examples of your own setbacks and how you responded. Perhaps you tried again, asked for help or realised you needed to change direction. Seeing adults handle disappointment without falling apart can be far more reassuring than being told everything will work out.
Support The Child You Have
Some children recover from disappointment quickly. Others, especially those experiencing anxiety, perfectionism or difficulties associated with neurodivergence, may need more reassurance and support. Resilience isn't built by pushing children into situations they're not ready to manage. It's developed gradually, through appropriate challenges and the security of knowing they're supported.
There will come a time when we can't negotiate the outcome, challenge the decision or make the disappointment disappear. Our children will have to decide whether to give up, change direction or have another go.
We can't make that decision for them. But we can help them grow up knowing that losing doesn't make them losers, mistakes don't define their abilities and not succeeding today says very little about what they might achieve tomorrow.
And when life doesn't go their way, they'll have something considerably more useful than another participation trophy: the confidence to work out what to do next.
