What to do when your child fails the exams

The key to helping your child to cope with failure is doing it with love and compassion.

According to educational psychologist Colleen Johnson, it is important to remember that when a child experiences failure it is usually accompanied by feelings of dejection and possibly even surprise at having failed — they don’t need someone else telling them how poorly they did, they know that already.

“Failure can be a good barometer of a child’s self-confidence, if they blame others or have to justify their defeat by belittling someone else, this needs to be addressed because it is not a good coping mechanism,” she says.

Some techniques that can assist your child to help them cope with failure are:

* Role model the behaviour you expect from your child. When a child sees a parent laughing at their own mistakes and coping with failure it sets a positive example, illustrating that mistakes are a part of life and can be dealt with patiently. Compassion and strength grow from failure and are wonderful traits to teach and possess.

* Relate to your child by letting them hear about your failures and how you dealt with them. When children hear their parent recount a story of failure from their own childhood days, it shows them that they have been in their shoes and that life goes on.

It also helps to give them real life examples of how successful people learned from their failures. Demonstrating how successful people gained strength from their initial defeat will encourage children to grow through their failures.

* Encourage your child to keep a journal and to write about the important and everyday things that happen in their life. Help them write about success as well as failure, and all of the other things in between. When they look back on the experiences that happened in their life they will see how their feelings changed with time, because they gained an appreciation for what they went through.

* Maintain consistent daily routines. Consistency is the key and provides children with a sense of normalcy which they need when coping with failure. It gives an emotional blanket of security that they can fall back on during this time.

* Encourage your child to talk through their feelings of defeat, but only up to a point. They need to release their emotions, but give them a time limit. Part of teaching your child to deal with defeat is learning to move on and not get stuck.

Bigger defeats or failures may need more time, but you get the idea. They should be encouraged to talk in order to release their emotions, but your role as their parent is to step in to help them move on with finding a solution or a new goal to strive for.

“Most important, however, is to encourage your child to keep trying their best. Your encouragement alone helps them see that you are a positive influence and your optimism becomes contagious,” says Johnson.

She adds that the way you handle their defeat will help to equip them with coping skills and put these great life lessons into gear whenever they experience another failure.

An important message for them to hear is that there is no problem so great that it cannot be solved. That no matter what, situations can be dealt with in a constructive manner.

The way you teach your child to handle defeat can turn out to be a remarkable gift they put to use throughout their life.