Letting Your Kids Be Bad at Things (So They Can Eventually Excel)

You know how they say opposites attract? I am a giant, my wife is dainty. I am clumsy, she is graceful. I love sports, and she dusts me at tennis, pickleball and badminton before heading back to crafting and crocheting. She is very clean… and I became very clean.

But the one area where we are exactly the same? We are both recovering helicopter parents.

Between the two of us, we’ve seen what can happen when kids don’t have enough guidance. So naturally, we overcorrected. We hovered. We intervened. We “helped.” A lot. And while it came from a good place, we eventually realized something: in trying to protect our kids from struggle, we were also holding them back from growth.

I hate not being good at things. It’s why I no longer play my wife in racquet sports and still can’t skate at 42. And no parent wants to see their child struggle. But the older our kids got, the more we saw how uncomfortable they were with failure. A missed shot could bring tears. A lost sweater could spark a meltdown. That’s when it clicked. The goal isn’t to remove struggle. It’s to teach them how to move through it.

Now, when my kids hit a rough moment, I let them sit in it for a bit. I call it their “glum chum” face. I’ll offer encouragement, maybe a suggestion, but I don’t solve problems they can solve themselves. I cheer just as loud for effort as I do for results. We talk about how even the best — LeBron, for example — have missed thousands of shots along the way.

Because struggle isn’t the problem. Avoiding it is. Your kids will be okay if they fail. In fact, they need to.

My oldest recently brought home a 71 on a math test. Instead of disappointment, we treated it as an opportunity — a chance to review, learn and grow. That shift matters.

So let them struggle. Let them get frustrated. Let them feel it. Then be there. Calm them. Support them. Love them. And help them figure it out. That’s where confidence is built — not in perfection, but in perseverance.

 

Jeremy McCall is a married father of 3, a social services case manager, and known as “The Dadfather”, being the founder and Past President of Dad Club London.