According to CNN, 11-year-old Jaheem Herrera died as a result of suicide — after being severely bullied.
Like many other parents, I am heartsick about this… wondering how this sort of thing can happen and what we can do.
At the moment, all I can think of is for us to talk about it…. raise some questions…. shed some light… share some solutions…
So, tell you your bullying story. Please.
Image by David Boyle via Flickr
We all want to comfort our children after they suffer any kind of failure or disappointment. It’s only natural. But the best parents I’ve met have resisted the urge to “make it all better.”
Instead, they ask a simple question: “What happened?”
The question is asked kindly and respectfully, but the intention is clear: to help the child understand why she didn’t reach her goal. Where did she go wrong? Was she unprepared? Did she not work hard enough? Or is her talent simply in another area?
This kind of questioning may seem rather sophisticated for a young child, but will teach an important lesson: failure can be viewed as a springboard to improvement, not as a dead-end or a reason for self-pity.
Would most parents like to provide a disappointment-free life for their kids? Probably. But stop and think for a moment: Is that realistic? Do you know anyone who has not had to confront disappointment or failure? Given that reality, dont we do our kids a greater kindness when we support them in learning from disappointment than when we try to shield them from it entirely?
Parents who react to their children’s failures in this manner provide skills that will last a lifetime. In other words, they raise people who are able to recognize their own competence — and never give up!
Syringe (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
There’s an epidemic in our culture. Have you heard of the ‘fear of failure flu?’
Early symptoms include sweaty palms and a knot in the stomach. Those in the middles stages of the ‘disease’ have an intense focus on ‘resume building’ — children’s activities are no longer for fun but become accomplishments that will somehow separate some important future application from the rest of the pack. A form of paralysis (that keeps kids from trying new things at which they might not instantly excel) is a symptom only visible in the later stages of the disease.
Parents who want to teach kids to value effort for its own sake start with themselves. They start with their own fears. Everyone fails from time to time; when we don’t it’s often because we’re not stretching far enough!
To vaccinate your kids agains the ‘fear of failure flu’ a careful self examination may be in order. After all, to thrive, a virus needs a carrier and a hospitable environment. As parents, it’s importnat that we take steps to make sure we’re not ‘carriers’ of the very behavior we’re trying to help our kids avoid!
For example, if you’re too hard on yourself when you ‘come up short’ do you hide that fact from your children? Could you, instead, share the fact that you — and they — are human beings with a lot to learn and there will always be times in life when we fail at something we care about? There is strength in learning to view setbacks as learning.
Which outlook is supported by the environment that your kids are in?
