Parents: Allow Your Fencers to Fail

PARENTS' CORNER

By Jenny Petite

It's difficult as a parent to watch your fencer fail.

Protecting our children from failure may prevent short-term pain but prohibits long-term growth. Allowing them to see failure as a learning tool gives them the ability to be less hesitant and more confident.

Often, we place failure in a negative light and on a pedestal it does not deserve. Challenging ourselves with a new mindset to failure can help our athletes use it to evaluate their goals with a new perspective, inspiring change and creating needed resilience essential for competitive fencing.

So, why is failure so great for your child? Ultimately, failure gives your fencer the chance to reevaluate themselves. Where did they go wrong? How can they improve? Failure can show your athlete what they shouldn’t be doing. You can harp and harp and tell them what they need, but until there is a negative consequence, your child may not have a desire to change certain aspects of their fencing regimen. And third, failure will not kill them, and it is inevitable. The more coping skills acquired, the easier it is to deal with each time it makes its appearance.

So how do we help our children use failure as a catalyst for success? When your athlete has had a tough defeat, allow them to feel the pain and discomfort (I promise this is temporary), but acknowledge their feelings and frustrations. Initial responses such as, “I know you must be frustrated; I hear you, that was a tough loss, I would be upset also” can be instructive and supportive. This lets your athlete know you are behind them and are not disappointed in them as a person.

When emotions are no longer high, point out things that went well in their bout. “You had a great touch on your opponent on the third point you scored; you looked like you executed that move you’ve been working on; after you spoke with your coach on the second break, you seemed to have gained your composure and you got a great touch right after.” Anything solid you can point out in most cases will help them start thinking about small successes, even amid the defeat. Seeing positive moments lays the groundwork to create the learning experience.

When the initial blow has worn off, talk about their strengths. Ask them what they think they need to improve on, without placing emphasis on the loss. In their own time, these conversations will have the potential for them to associate their weaknesses to their losses, seeing the need for these weaknesses to improve. This can help in creating a game plan for success whether it is with you, on their own or with the coach.

Normalize failure. Help your child see everyone, especially successful athletes who have had major failures. Take Michael Jordan for instance, one of the greatest basketball players of all time. He was cut from his high school basketball team and did not receive a scholarship for college to play basketball. These failures should have told him to give up. Instead, these setbacks drove him to work harder and harder. With stories like this, you can help your athlete see the pain and failure others endured and how it played a key part in their ultimate success.

Although your children look up to their athletic heroes, you are their closest role model.

Telling them stories of your own setbacks and how you dealt with them appropriately or inappropriately will also help them see failure as an everyday occurrence and take the fear out of it. Some of the greatest lessons and bonding that came between my dad and myself was when I was able to see the chinks in his armor and hear about his failures and letdowns and his ability to deal with them. Normalizing failure will set our athletes up for success both on and off the fencing strip.