Over the past few weeks your child will have been trying out for sports and other extra-curricular teams. But what if they didn’t make the cut this time around? School life is often peppered with these blows of disappointment and it can feel overwhelming for our youngsters. We speak to Neil Brooks, Headmaster of Cranleigh Prep to find out how we can help teach our kids to turn adverse situations into a positive.

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With the exception of an unfortunate few, in this country we are all privileged to be able to make choices about our lives. Often our wishes are a different matter – they may not come to fruition when it comes to future wealth, health, employment prospects, affairs of the heart. Whilst it is only human to have desires, we should try to have a degree of stoicism and realism as life plays out.

We can, however, be more confident when it comes to our choices, mindset and how we approach life in general. The “glass half full or half empty” saying is an old one but a good one! We can choose to be optimistic or pessimistic and the seeds of our approach are sown in childhood.

I really favour the path of optimism and here’s why: our time on this earth is limited. Those of you who have read his book, ‘Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals’ will know that Oliver Burkeman thinks the lucky amongst us might just have four thousand weeks (about eighty years). To me that is sobering and I certainly don’t want to spend too much time in the doldrums! Life will throw all sorts of uninvited and unwelcome surprises our way, some of which are less important in the grand scheme of things and others that are life-changing. We have a choice in how we deal with those moments and their aftermath.

Learn from the greats…

There are many examples of how some people’s positivity in the face of extreme adversity seems super human. Dame Deborah James, Nelson Mandela, Stephen Hawkin, Jim Carey, Ben Parkinson, Bethany Hamilton, all faced very public challenges yet remained positive and there are countless examples of people who have faced significant failure or personal issues only to rise to dizzying heights of success (JK Rowling, Bill Gates, Albert Einstein, Richard Branson… the list goes on). Without exception each and every one chose to pick themselves up and go again, moreover they learned from their experiences, or accepted their lot, and adapted accordingly.

Let them fail

It is ludicrous to think that our children will live lives free of any trouble or strife and it is our absolute duty to prepare them for pitfalls. Let’s look at what that preparation looks like. It’s pretty simple, because it is the same preparation we use for almost every skill we possess: practice! We must let our children fail and, alongside teaching them how to take responsibility for rectifying any failures, they must learn to be optimistic, to persevere, to push on through.

An analogy I often use is that of the peeled orange. How often when our children are young do we peel the orange for them? Most all the time because it’s easier, quicker, less messy and we see a smile on their face when we pass it to them. The child learns nothing, however. Allow them to peel the orange, to make a mess, to struggle to break the skin, to experience the juice all over their hands and face; their sense of satisfaction is so much greater having achieved their end goal through their own – often inelegant – efforts.

Teach your child about positivity

Teach your children to make the most of every situation, to persevere, to understand that struggle is not to be avoided but that it is part of life and to be positive. Be there to support and encourage, be there to love and guide but do not give them a utopian belief that their adult life will be nothing but an endless series of successes; they’ll be in for a shock if you do!

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