Want to know why failures in high school can be a good thing?

High School is a time for building a transcript.  Homeschoolers want a glittering record of awesome accomplishments in place by graduation.  So how come failures in high school can actually be a really GOOD thing?

Trying things is an important part of high school, and that almost guarantees some failures along the way.  New endeavors, or new levels of commitment to something only dabbled-in before help students determine their direction for after graduation, grow as individuals, and form relationships with like-minded people.  But no one is good at everything, and no one really loves everything he or she tries.

While teaching commitment is a priority as we build character in our children, it also needs to be okay to try something and determine that it is not for them.  We need to teach our kids the difference between quitting (because we’re tired of doing something that costs us) and deciding to end something (an intentional evaluation that time and energy would be better spent elsewhere).

Learning to choose between good and better…

between what is a good fit for someone else but feels way out of my area of strength and calling…

between something that can be peripheral but not a core priority for this season…

these are life-equipping skills that our kids need to make good choices in the decades to come as well as right now.

Even academic “failure” can be a good thing.  Most students hit a subject in high school that is a real stretch.  Especially for kids who have always found academic success near at hand, facing that first “failure” (for some of these kids they think that getting anything less than 100% is failure!) is confidence-battering.  Allowing them to perform poorly while encouraging them to do what is possible for THEM equips them to understand that they are going to struggle and do things less-than-perfectly in life, and sometimes a job barely done is truly all that is possible.  (True confession:  I totally messed up on my taxes this year and have to file an amended return.  But I did the best I could do.  Oh well!)

I believe in hard work.  I believe in teaching our kids to stick to it when things get tough.  But I also know that my child’s identity has to be tied to more than his ability to achieve whatever goal is before him.  He also needs to be able to fall short of that goal with peace and gratitude for the God who loves us all in our insufficiency.  He needs to understand how to extend grace to others when they don’t hit the bullseye.

I love seeing my child succeed in high school.

But I’m praying for the boldness to also love seeing him fail, failure with peace and with courage and with the ability to learn from it all.

(I think I’ll pray that for his mom, too.)

What do you think?

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