This week I spent time with a group of fellow psychologists that devote at least some of their time working in education. Aside from spending an afternoon swapping resources, building links and sharing our experiences, a few key themes emerged in our discussions. One topic that was revisited repeatedly was fear of failure, or more accurately some parents’ reactions to failure, mistakes or less than maximal performance. This phenomenon seemed to be particularly prevalent in the experiences of practitioners who worked in the South-East.

As we unpicked the subject whilst the day progressed, we agreed that an important outcome of education for most parents is that their children move into later life with a positive, ‘growth’ mind-set and the resilience required to weather the headwinds that are bound to come along at one stage or another. The group also concurred that parents recognised the need for their children to make mistakes on occasion and be unsuccessful, if they were ever to develop this resilience and mind-set.

Counterintuitively perhaps, the experience of some psychologists was that even when parents recognised that this was the case, some were never willing to let their children experience disappointment or failure at any stage of their schooling and even became more averse to any failure as the children moved on to senior school and beyond. There is a clear tension here, but, unlike some of my peers, I am a firm believer in decision-making being both a rational and emotional process, which may go some way to explaining this contradiction perhaps?

We know it is healthy to fail as part of our development, we understand at a rational level that it is inevitable and, for some writers, is a key part of the learning process, especially in a safe, secure and nurturing environment such as a good prep school. Yet, for some parents (and teachers!), it seems to be an extremely stressful event and therefore becomes a stressful event for their children. This can lead to a fear of failure and anxiety and perfectionism. If we teach young people how to manage their lows and learn from their mistakes, as opposed to sweeping any chance of failure away, can we not help them achieve their full potential?  I wonder if we are also dealing with some baggage from our own schooling here, too?