WAG Scared of failure...

[Deleted member 17723]

What do you do when you, your gymnast or your dd/ds is afraid of FAILURE? Not injury, not pain, but failure.

 

[needcoffee]

I tell her that there's no such thing as failure. She has failed nobody. Just getting out there and giving it a go = success in my books. Gymnasts are amazing. All of them. The amount of hard work, determination, and mental toughness it takes just to attempt some of the skills they have is unbelievable to me.

Did anyone die because you fell off the beam? No? All good then.

 

[raenndrops]

OG is a major perfectionist. She also has a fear of failure. When she thinks she has "failed" at something, I point out her successes... "I fell on my full turn on beam" = "You went for your full turn on beam... and you got credit for it before the fall" OR "But you got back up and landed your Cartwheel-Cartwheel."

I can find a positive in ANYTHING negative she points out because she is a sweet girl with a beautiful heart.

With YG (age 10), I show her video of her succeeding at the same thing (if I have it) or I remind her of a time BEFORE she had it... OR (my favorite) I change the subject to Valentines Day, 2015 when she beat a 16 year old on bars... AND remind her that the 16 yr old competed Old L6 and New L5 before going to Xcel GOLD (and she should be in Platinum or New L6).

 

[Deleted member 14190]

To error is not to fail. To give up is to fail.

 

[wordsmith]

I don't know how old your daughter is; but can you talk her through into understanding that the road to success is a journey that is paved with a series of necessary failures?

Some kids aim to please and are fearful of looking bad in front of others; or of disappointing others. So they fear the risk of trying and failing. Let them know it's okay. Help them shift and mature their perception of our they perceive "failure".

“I am who I am today because of the mistakes I made yesterday.”
― The Prolific Penman



One of the ways that I describe the goal of strength training is to achieve failure. You want to achieve muscle failure in order to stimulate and give reason for your muscle fibers to rebuild themselves stronger than before in expectation for the next time you subject them to the same stresses. They didn't like that the first time and want to be ready for it the next. That's how I explain it to some kids, and sometimes it clicks for them during conditioning; and you can use this as a metaphor for achieving a temporary state of failure in life, too.

Share this:

“I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career.
I’ve lost almost 300 games.
26 times I’ve been trusted to take the game-winning shot…and missed.
I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life.
And that is why…I succeed”


-Michael Jordan, quite possibly the most successful basketball player of all time. His career includes winning 6 NBA championships.

In his sophomore year of high school, he failed to make the varsity basketball team. “I was very disappointed and thought the coach had made a mistake. But my mother said the best thing for me to do is to prove the coach wrong. And I started working on my game the day after I was cut.”

Getting cut from the team was quite possibly the best thing to have happened to Jordan. It might have been a life-changing, turning point in his life that brought out the best in him. Rather than giving into defeat and failure, he worked harder than ever. His fear of not trying outweighed his fear of trying and failing. Failure motivated him to success.

Pain and the setback of today’s failure is temporary when you are willing to try your best. The pain of giving up? That kind of pain can last a lifetime.

Today, will you be willing to sacrifice who you are for who you say you wish to become?​

One more blogpost, linking to Tony Retrosi.

 

[coachmolly]

I have a kiddo like this in one of my groups and just do lots of building up- praising constantly, taking baby steps so they can build up their "success bank" and if an oops happens have something to fall back on, reminding them I would rather they fall while trying their hardest than give it a less than their best attempt, and helping them know that we all fall/struggle/mess up from time to time and just need to hop back up and try again.
I am one of those "high strung" scared of failure folks myself, I don't like even attempting things I don't think I will be at least halfway decent at. I put a ton of pressure on myself to live up to my own expectations and am very hard on myself if I fall short. So I try to give those kiddos what I feel like I needed as a gymnast from time to time. Because these kids are great kids- hard working, thinkers, pay attention to detail, don't accept anything less than their best- I enjoy having them in class and don't find it hard to find something to praise.

 

[oplei]

As a parent I try to remember to tell stories of my own failures. Usually at the dinner table. Big failures, small failures are shared equally with the successes. I find that having an atmosphere of acceptance of being human helps soften the inevitable fails. I don't directly relate it to gym I just share. I take responsibility for my faults-it's not a blame game it's just a discussion about how I went for something and came up shorter than I hoped. Even if it is going to the grocery store for one thing and coming home with ten things none of which being the item I went to the store to buy.

 

[Deleted member 17723]

Thank you everyone! That is definitely some very good advice! Thanks!

 

[gracyomalley]

I think failure is what most of them get scared of as they hit puberty/mentally mature. It's been the big thing with dd along with her vestibular stuff.

It's also been a good chance to help her learn about reframing her concept of "success" and "failure ". And it's been super hard as a parent to watch. All in all being open about times in life where I've had to adjust goals or keep looking for solutions as well as not give up has helped (I think -she came back to gym and is training for competition next year so something is helping her)

 

[kimute]

Give your kids an opportunity to fail early and often. If they always podium in gym, sign them up for something challenging where they might lose. At least some of the time. Best to get some experience with failure before puberty.

 

[raenndrops]

Give your kids an opportunity to fail early and often. If they always podium in gym, sign them up for something challenging where they might lose. At least some of the time. Best to get some experience with failure before puberty.

My dad did that for me as a kid... I played baseball (coach pitch league for ages 6-12). I was REALLY GOOD. The next league up was little league (ages 8-12). You had to try out for little league, so I did... at 10, 11, and 12. My dad knew after the first try out that the coach would NEVER accept me on the team. By the last time, the coach had 3 reasons: 1 - I was a girl ... 2 - I didn't wear a Child Medium uniform ... 3 - I was my father's child (my dad had pointed out that spring the unfairness of the coach pitch kids having to PAY for their shirts every year while the Little League team got NEW uniforms EVERY year with the popcorn fundraiser money - even though the coach pitch kids sold the majority of the popcorn... So that year, Little League had to wear the same uniforms as the previous year and the 3 coach pitch teams got jerseys. FYI - Coach Pitch used the SAME jerseys for at least 25 years - without replacing them... I know because 25 years later, the coach of MY old team was using my jersey as his coach's jersey ~ with my blood stain still on the "tag" patch at the bottom of the jersey - bloody nose during a game).
Dad DID make sure I would have success too... He and the other 2 coach pitch coaches put together an all girl all-star team to face the little league team (there were 12 girls ages 8-12 between the 3 teams... and 5 of us SHOULD have been on the little league team based on skills... or they should have made a 2nd little league team because with us 5 and a couple boys that were borderline and 3-4 of the extra boys on the LL team we had enough to field 2 teams). We faced the LL team a total of 3 times. The first time, the LL coach said we cheated and the 2nd time, he just couldn't accept that his SUPERIOR boys team were beaten by girls. He just had to suck it up when we beat his team the last time

 

[wgymmom]

DD likes a YT video "Why Elite Athletes Fail" - something like that. She'll never be elite, but she will come home and watch it sometimes.

She had a rough first HC who was super hard on her and called her a disappointment when she was maybe barely 10. She was afraid of HIM, afraid of letting HIM down, and he said she was afraid of the skills. MOM knew the difference. All I can say is, thank goodness he's gone now.

I always tell her that every single Olympic gymnast, Simone Biles... they have fallen and busted their butts, split the beam, cried in the gym, you name it, countless times. You don't get through gymnastics without a lot of that. But they got up and kept going. That's what counts.

 

[thepenguin]

DD likes a YT video "Why Elite Athletes Fail" - something like that. She'll never be elite, but she will come home and watch it sometimes.

She had a rough first HC who was super hard on her and called her a disappointment when she was maybe barely 10. She was afraid of HIM, afraid of letting HIM down, and he said she was afraid of the skills. MOM knew the difference. All I can say is, thank goodness he's gone now.

I always tell her that every single Olympic gymnast, Simone Biles... they have fallen and busted their butts, split the beam, cried in the gym, you name it, countless times. You don't get through gymnastics without a lot of that. But they got up and kept going. That's what counts.

Is it "why do we fall?" I love that video!

 

[wgymmom]

Is it "why do we fall?" I love that video!

This version:

 

[MILgymFAM]

This version:

My DD watches this video before every single meet. She says she draws inspiration from it. Love.

 

[Deleted member D3987]

What do you do when you, your gymnast or your dd/ds is afraid of FAILURE? Not injury, not pain, but failure.

humor her. let her know she chose gymnastics when she got to the age she decided to continue and go every day.

then let her know she chose the wrong sport. we spend most of our time failing and crashing in order to become proficient at what we do let alone getting "good".

and THEN let her know that there is probably nothing left for her to do. that part of life is failing. without failure you can't learn. without learning you go nowhere.

understand? got to tie it in to what happens down the road. "show me a person who has failed 1000 times over and i'll show you a person who has succeeded $1,000,000 times over". Bill Gates

 

[Deleted member 18037]

Fail=

first attempt in learning

forever acquiring important lessons

It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might has well not have lived at all, in which case you have failed by default.

J. K. Rowling


You have to be able to accept failure to get better.

LeBron James