Teaching children to cope with failure and frustration

Life doesn't always go to plan. Kids will sometimes fail and feel frustrated. Katy Gosset looks at how we can build resilience in our children.Life doesn't always go to plan. Kids will sometimes fail and feel frustrated. Katy Gosset looks at how we can build resilience in our children.Subscribe free to Are We There Yet? on iPhones: iTunes, RadioPublic or Spotify. On Android phones: RadioPublic or Stitcher.To err is human -- so the saying goes - but it seems like some of us forgot to tell our kids.In fact, clinical psychologist, Catherine Gallagher, fears some children aren't learning to handle failure because their parents protect them from negative emotions and experiences.She said modern society gave people the message that unpleasant emotions should be avoided."This is absolutely not true. They are vital and, unless we learn how to identify them and to move through them, we can believe they're wrong and try to avoid them."Ms Gallagher said one such emotion, frustration, usually turned up during tough times, when people were failing at something or when their expectations were not 'aligned with reality'. "It's designed to create an uncomfortable feeling that ideally motivates us to work harder, persevere or get some support in order to make that feeling go away by resolving the situation." However she said some parents' approach was to rescue children from any uncomfortable feelings."We can't all be All Blacks so, if we keep protecting our kids from little failures and frustrations, how do they learn to cope with the bigger ones?"The roll on effect might be to reduce their ability to learn, Ms Gallagher said"It might stop a child having the confidence to try new things where the outcome is not certain or to cope with things that don't fit into their expectations or plans."It was up to parents to help their children experience a range of feelings: "the good, the bad and definitely the ugly'."Children will not sit with hard emotions unless we make this happen""If you're waiting for your children to handle frustration and failure better and you can back off, well, they just simply won't." By identifying and discussing emotions with their children, parents should instead help them to take responsibility for these kind of feelings."In psychology-speak they are moving from us regulating their experience to co-regulation to self-regulation."But if we're waiting for self-regulation at the start we'll be waiting for a long time."This process of introducing emotions could begin when children were babies…Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details