“The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.” –Nelson Mandela
The neural circuitry associated with processing fear in humans primarily involves the prefrontal cortex, amygdala, and hippocampus, with the amygdala developing first to functionally support fear reactions in early infancy.
People with a fear of failure tend to avoid situations that might not produce a favourable outcome. It is important to allow children to make mistakes and learn from them so that they don’t become adults with an intense fear of failure.
Possible causes of fear of failure can be related to family history, anxiety, traumatic experiences, low self-worth, procrastination, and no self-compassion.
Martin Covington in research found that there are 4 types of students when dealing with failure:-
- Success-oriented
- Overstriveness
- Failure avoiding
- Failure accepting
To overcome the fear of failure and allow the child to take risks and experiment, here are some tips for children to embrace growth while making mistakes and learning from them:
- Demonstrate optimistic attitude: Parents should allow children to make mistakes and be optimistic this takes away the pressure of being perfect from the child. Tell children that even if they make mistakes, you would still love them the same, show unconditional love, allow the child to practise gratitude and self-compassion, be supportive of your child, and don’t criticise them for making mistakes. Children who grow up in highly critical households tend to experience the fear of failure later in life.
- Emphasise effort not ability: Instead of solely focusing on the outcome, appreciate children for their effort, persistence, hard work, and strategies they used regardless of the outcome.
Carol Dweck in an experiment found out that children who were praised for their efforts, worked very hard even though they made plenty of mistakes whereas children who were praised for their intelligence became discouraged when they made mistakes.
- Take calculated risks: Author and entrepreneur Ferris said, “You come away from that exercise realising, wow I was getting extremely anxious and all worked up over something that is completely reversible and not a big deal.”
It is important to encourage children to think of the worst-case scenario so that even if things go south, they will know how to cope with it. Allow them to take risks, and make their own decisions, and give them a sense of ownership so that they don’t grow up feeling that they have to live up to their family’s expectations and develop a fear of making mistakes.
- The iceberg analogy: By acknowledging that what we see on the surface—visible actions and outcomes—is just a small part of the larger picture, the iceberg analogy helps normalise failure as a natural part of the human experience. Failure, like the tip of the iceberg, is visible and often draws our attention, but it’s only a small part of the overall journey and growth process.
Effective communication is crucial for developing a healthy relationship between parents and children. Talk about your own experiences with your children, your own failures and how your experiences and failures made you who you are. Children look up to people who are realistic rather than perfect.
- Preach self-love: Teach children the idea of self-love at an early age. Tell them the importance of positive self-talk and that their mistakes don’t define them. Practising self-love builds confidence that reduces the fear of failure. Research shows that children who indulge in self-sabotaging behaviour have lower academic success and perpetuate failure. Students can practise gratitude, journal about their feelings and fears, and create vision boards. This will help them get a clear picture of the scenario.
The fear of failure is something that everyone experiences from time to time and it is important to learn how to overcome the fear of failure especially for children at a young age. The traumatic experiences that one faces at a young age can actually take away an important part of their life and that’s why it is important to protect children from building fear against failure, as failure is an important part of life and one can’t define success without failure.
Cyboard School is an online school where we teach skills to cope up with failure and find solutions for overcoming them, personalised for every kid. We also motivate students to take ownership of their acts and find solutions for problems, this helps them with not only developing critical thinking skills but also overcoming their fear of failure.
Join us at Cyboard if you feel your child is reluctant to make mistakes and take risks. We can help your child conquer their fear of failure.
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