What Swimming Lessons Taught Me About Letting Kids Fail (And Why Madeline Levine is My New Hero)

James, back when he DEFINITELY wasn’t a “great swimmer!”

My children finished up their annual six weeks of day camp last Friday. We tried a different camp this year, partly because our friends were switching and we do a bit of carpooling; partly because it’s less expensive than even the relatively inexpensive YMCA the boys have been going to for four previous years; and partly because the camp, run by our town’s recreation department and held at a large local park, offers daily swimming lessons (the drawback to this camp is the infernal, can’t-escape-it, snack culture).

I have a bit of a thing about wanting my children to be good swimmers. I can swim well. I’m no Missy Franklin, but what I get out of my ability to swim competently is, to me, extremely valuable. In the past I’ve swum for exercise. I can do laps if I want. I can float comfortably on my back in the gentle swell of waves in my local and beloved Long island Sound. I hope to never have to do this, but if I had to, I could keep myself afloat for some time in an emergency situation. I feel good in the water.

I can swim because it was important to my parents that my siblings and I learn. We hated swimming lessons, which for us didn’t take place in a smooth pool, but at a rocky beach. We traveled (parent-free, I might add, starting at age 5) in a yellow school bus, rattling along the winding road to the shore, and were compelled to go in the water even at low tide, or when the mornings were chilly. But in retrospect, it was much better than pool-learning, precisely because of the challenges it posed (and I have to add, no one had yet invented swim shoes. I had some tough feet!). It was challenging. We didn’t want to do it, and we did it, and we are the better for it.

So, back to the present: Even though the kids are done with camp, I signed them up for two more weeks of daily swim lessons at the same park’s pool, because we needed something to do for these fallow weeks, because it was surprisingly affordable, and because they’ve made such great strides in their swimming and I wanted to keep up the momentum.

But then came my son James’ response, when I told him he’d be taking additional lessons: “But I’m already a great swimmer!”

Um. No. Which I told him: “Sweetie. You can swim, but you are not a great swimmer.”

It felt a little weird to say, regardless of the fact that it’s the truth. He’s not a great swimmer. He’s not even really a very good swimmer, and neither is his brother. They are getting there, but they are far from it.

So, how a parent say “You are not good at this, son”?

Madeline Levine, PhD, author of the new book Teach Your Children Well: Parenting for Authentic Success, would likely say, “how does a parent not say that?” She’d say that those parents who have been saying, since their children were toddlers, that they are great at everything, are going about this whole raising-good-kids thing in the wrong way. Well meaning, sure. But wrong.

I heard Dr. Levine on a radio program last week (incidentally, on my way to the park to pick up my sons from camp), and felt the urge to pull over and take notes. I have not yet read her book, though it’s on order (she also wrote The Price of Privilege), but I did read her opinion piece, called “Raising Successful Children,” in last Sunday’s New York Times, which is well worth a read.

She writes about how over-doing for our kids from the get-go, on up to and including writing college essays for them (or even talking in that telltale, parents-are-in-too-deep way about the college process; “We are applying to Columbia”) you remove their motivation, and stunt their growing sense of identity and agency. I feel so validated right now, because her piece sounds remarkably like chapter nine of a certain book I, uh, wrote recently.

You gotta quit praising your kids to the point where they’re afraid to try more because, hey! they’re already experts! It’s true: Praise (rote, or in overdose) is poison. As Levine writes:

This may seem counterintuitive, but praising children’s talents and abilities seems to rattle their confidence. Tackling more difficult puzzles carries the risk of losing one’s status as ‘smart’ and deprives kids of the thrill of choosing to work simply for its own sake, regardless of outcomes.

And you have to let your child fail. As she continues:

…it is in the small daily risks — the taller slide, the bike ride around the block, the invitation extended to a new classmate — that growth takes place. In this gray area of just beyond the comfortable is where resilience is born. [emphasis mine]

And (one more) you have to be prepared to and fine with seeing your kids unhappy, uncomfortable, or not so pleased with you (as my James was when i insisted he take more lessons because, no, he’s not a great swimmer). This, this really got me, with the pure ring of truth:

If you can’t stand to see your child unhappy, you are in the wrong business. The small challenges that start in infancy (the first whimper that doesn’t bring you running) present the opportunity for “successful failures,” that is, failures your child can live with and grow from. To rush in too quickly, to shield them, to deprive them of those challenges is to deprive them of the tools they will need to handle the inevitable, difficult, challenging and sometimes devastating demands of life.

Boo-yah. And on to more and still more swim lessons, my friends. What do you think?