“The greatest successes in life are built on a foundation of failure and mistakes.” —Perry Cocking

According to my research, at the highest level of professional football, one in every five passes is unsuccessful, and one in every three dribbles is unsuccessful. So, worrying about your child playing perfectly, or getting frustrated with them losing the ball, is going to make watching them play very frustrating and not much fun. Even Messi, during spells in his career at Barcelona, statistically gave the ball away more than any other player in La Liga.

To fulfil potential, a child needs to try things, make mistakes, try again, and play with freedom and self-expression. Mistakes give players and coaches something to work on. It lets players know what they like doing, what they don’t like doing and what works for them. If you are watching a child’s training session and it looks very good, with no mistakes being made, and everyone looking well drilled, then I would worry if the players were just going through the motions and that not a lot of growth and learning is actually happening. Don’t be fooled by coaching sessions that look aesthetically pleasing. They are often set up to make the coach look good, with very few mistakes happening. This is why I’m always dubious of hearing the phrase, “The coaching is really good there.” It’s often the sessions that look scrappy, where there’s chaos, randomness and where loads of mistakes are happening, that are the best ones for development and growth. We stigmatise mistakes in today’s culture. This stifles creativity. If a child isn’t able to, is scared of, or has been coached out of making mistakes, then they will never fulfil their potential.

A mistake is only a mistake if you don’t learn from it, so mistakes are golden opportunities for children to learn. They are also golden opportunities for coaches to coach. Any coach can coach the sport, but the good ones coach the player. Mistakes speed up the natural learning process—they are the foundation of success.

If your child is at a club where mistakes are frowned upon, and drills are set up to look good, then your child will not likely fulfil their potential. The very best coaches create an environment where children can explore the possibilities, experiment, make mistakes and learn. They actually set up sessions purposefully to be challenging and where mistakes will be made. This is how learning is done.

Mistakes and failures are a common theme throughout this book. That’s because failure is the new F word and needs reframing! Don’t let your child be afraid of failure. Reframe the F word to fascinating. Let your child become fascinated by it. The learning opportunities through reflection and analysing feelings. Failure is essential for those opportunities. Learning how to deal with failure ultimately goes a long way to determining how fulfilled and successful our lives are. Reframe failure as feedback. Without failure, nothing can be achieved. Reframe it as challenge and curiosity (yes, technically, C words!). In fact, without failure, the challenge simply wasn’t challenging enough. Resilience is one of the keys to leading a happy and successful life. Resilience can only be developed through struggle. Sport gives us parents a wonderful opportunity to help build resilience in our children. Not letting those opportunities slip away is probably the biggest gift you can ultimately give your child.

Helping to develop resilience is vital in fulfilling potential, both on and off the pitch. How children respond to setbacks and failure and take responsibility will ultimately determine how successful they are at anything in life. The gap between the failure and the reaction is crucial. Help your child learn to pause in that gap and consider how useful their reaction might be. Learning to do this over time can be a game-changer for them.

If I could make sure that you take one lesson away from this book, it would be to not protect your child from failure. I think it’s natural to always want our children to succeed, but true success only really comes through struggle and the lessons learned from it. I’ve seen children who have always been taken around to play for the best teams. They get so used to winning that when failure inevitably comes, they simply can’t handle it. Worse still, I’ve seen parents who can’t handle It! When faced with failure, encourage them to take ownership of it and to look for the lessons within it. Too many times, I’ve seen parents blame the coach, the referee, the pitch, the tactics of the opposition and so on and so forth. Help children to learn to accept failure as part of the learning process and get the most out of it. Failure is disappointing enough, so they may as well get something out of it!

This blog was taken from my book, Did You Win, Did You Score…? How to Help Your Child Succeed at Football and Life.

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