Developing calmness under pressure wasn’t something you achieved through reading. It came from real-world experiences like losing a client but still managing to meet payroll, or facing rejection and returning to pitch again the next day.
The ability to endure discomfort while continuing to progress is perhaps your most significant asset, surpassing any specific skill on your resume.
Many high achievers overlook this: you can intentionally instill this trait in your children. It’s not about lecturing them on perseverance but rather creating the same conditions that fostered it in you.
How Losing Built Your Resilience
Reflect on the origins of your resilience.
It didn’t come from easy deals but from periods when nothing seemed to work, yet you persisted. The cycle of frustration followed by renewed attempts, repeated countless times, shaped you.
Children develop in a similar manner. However, many well-intentioned parents, particularly those who are successful, inadvertently disrupt this cycle. They remove obstacles before their child encounters them, praise outcomes, and intervene at the first sign of struggle, finding it uncomfortable to watch failure.
You wouldn’t operate your business like this. A team that never experiences failure never sharpens its skills. The same principle applies at home.
Why Struggle is More Beneficial Than Praise
Constant praise is akin to a participation trophy culture that you wouldn’t allow in a business setting.
When a child repeatedly hears “you’re so smart” after minor accomplishments, they learn that maintaining a capable image is the goal. As a result, they start avoiding challenging tasks to protect that image. Carol Dweck’s research on mindset supports this: children praised for effort embraced tougher challenges, while those praised for intelligence avoided risks to preserve their image.
This is the trap. While you think you’re building confidence, you’re actually fostering risk aversion.
True confidence arises when a child attempts something slightly challenging, fails, and realizes that failure isn’t catastrophic. They endure the frustration and eventually find a way to improve, mirroring the process that helped you through your toughest times.
Teaching Resilience to Your Children
The key is to present your child with genuine, repeatable challenges that have some difficulty.
From your own experience, you know that a third failed attempt provides more lessons than an initial easy success. A child who misses the top of a climbing structure and tries again is engaging in the same effort you exert after a failed pitch or lost client: experiencing frustration and trying once more. Monkey bars are particularly effective for this because feedback is immediate and honest, and the only way to succeed is to keep trying. If you have the space, a backyard climbing set like Vuly’s Quest monkey bars offers a continuous, low-risk opportunity for your child to try something that previously defeated them. This provides hundreds of chances to be challenged and improve, a habit that has been central to your own achievements.
Physical challenges work better than many alternatives because a child can’t negotiate with a monkey bar. Either they hold on or they don’t. This honesty is rare and valuable, offering a seven-year-old a truthful assessment akin to a market feedback.
Unlike scheduled classes, these are always available. No appointments, no coach required. Children can walk outside, attempt, fail, and try again at their own pace. This autonomy is as crucial as the challenge itself.
Set the Conditions and Step Back
This can be challenging for driven parents who are accustomed to solving problems. Creating opportunities for struggle requires intentionally not solving problems.
When your child can’t reach the next bar and seeks your help, the instinct is to assist. Resist that urge. Encourage them to “try again” and mean it. Allow them to feel frustration, as it is an integral part of learning.
The same applies to outcomes. Avoid saying “you’re a natural.” Instead, try “I saw how you kept going after you slipped.” This reinforces the behavior you want to see repeated: persistence.
This approach doesn’t mean putting a child in danger and walking away. There’s a fine line between challenge and neglect, and it’s important to recognize it. Younger children need more supervision than older ones. Some children need more encouragement, while others need guidance to stay within safe limits. You understand your child best. Adjust the difficulty so it’s challenging but manageable, similar to setting a stretch goal for your team.
Resilience Grows Over Time
Building resilience wasn’t an overnight process for you. It developed gradually, setback by setback, until handling pressure became second nature.
Children learn in the same way. Each time your child falls from the bars and gets back up, they are making a small contribution to the resilience you have cultivated throughout your career. Over several years, enduring frustration becomes their norm.
While you can’t replicate the specific challenges that shaped your resilience, you can create the conditions for them to develop their own version, starting in the backyard. This is a more valuable legacy than anything you might leave in a will.
