I watched my grandson try to build a tower of blocks last week. It fell down seven times before he finally got it to stand. His mother, my daughter, had to physically sit on her hands to stop herself from helping. When that tower finally stood on its own, the look on his face was worth every frustrated moment that came before.
Here’s something I’ve learned after raising my own kids and now watching my grandchildren grow: the parents who resist the urge to smooth every path are giving their children something far more valuable than comfort.
They’re building the kind of inner strength that shows up decades later, in boardrooms and hospital waiting rooms and all the messy moments life throws at us. Let me share ten situations where adults who experienced small failures as children consistently come out ahead.
1) Navigating job loss or career setbacks
Losing a job can feel like the ground has disappeared beneath your feet. But adults who learned early that failure isn’t fatal tend to recover faster. They’ve been here before, in smaller ways. Maybe they didn’t make the soccer team at age ten, or they bombed their first school presentation. Those moments taught them something crucial: you can survive disappointment.
Research from the American Psychological Association confirms that resilience isn’t something we’re born with. It’s built through experience, particularly through facing and overcoming challenges. Children who are shielded from all failure miss these building opportunities.
I’ve seen friends my age crumble at career setbacks because they never learned to separate their worth from their achievements. Their parents meant well, but constant rescue missions left them unprepared.
The adults who bounce back? They dust themselves off, update their resumes, and get moving. They know this feeling will pass because they’ve felt it before and survived.
2) Handling rejection in relationships
Remember the first time someone didn’t want to be your friend? Or when you asked someone to a dance and they said no? Those moments sting terribly at the time. But they’re also training grounds for the heart.
Adults who experienced social rejection as children, without parents rushing in to fix everything, develop what I call emotional calluses. Not coldness, mind you, but a healthy layer of protection that allows them to take romantic and social risks without being devastated by every no.
I’ve watched my own children navigate breakups with a steadiness that surprised me. Looking back, I think it came from all those playground disputes we let them work through themselves. They learned that rejection hurts, but it doesn’t define you. They learned to try again.
That’s a gift that keeps giving well into adulthood, whether you’re dating at twenty-five or making new friends at sixty-five.
3) Making difficult financial decisions
Money mistakes are some of the best teachers, especially when the stakes are small. The child who blows their allowance on candy and then can’t afford the toy they really wanted learns something no lecture can teach. They learn consequences.
As I covered in a previous post, letting children manage small amounts of money, and yes, sometimes waste it, builds financial intuition. Adults who had this experience tend to be more thoughtful with larger sums. They’ve already made the mistake of impulse buying. They’ve felt the regret. They’ve learned to pause.
Compare this to adults whose parents always bailed them out or managed every penny for them. They often struggle with budgeting, debt, and financial planning because they never developed that internal warning system. The discomfort of an empty piggy bank at age eight becomes the wisdom to build an emergency fund at thirty-eight.
4) Dealing with health challenges
Nobody wants their child to suffer. But minor illnesses and injuries, handled with calm support rather than panic, teach children that their bodies can heal. They learn to trust the process of recovery.
Adults who had this foundation tend to handle health scares with more composure. They’re still concerned, of course, but they don’t spiral into catastrophic thinking at the first sign of trouble. They’ve learned that discomfort is temporary and that they have the strength to get through difficult physical experiences.
I think about my own father, who treated every scraped knee as a minor inconvenience rather than a crisis. That attitude shaped how I’ve approached my own health challenges over the years. When something serious does come along, you need that baseline of calm to make good decisions.
Parents who rush to the emergency room for every bump and bruise may be inadvertently teaching their children that their bodies are fragile and untrustworthy.
5) Adapting to major life transitions
Moving to a new city. Starting at a new school. Becoming a parent yourself. Life is full of transitions that require us to let go of what was and embrace what is. This is hard for everyone, but it’s especially hard for people who never practiced it in smaller ways.
Children who changed schools, tried new activities, or dealt with family moves learn that they can adapt. They discover that the anxiety of newness fades, that they can make friends again, that unfamiliar eventually becomes familiar. These are lessons that serve them for life.
Dr. Michael Ungar, a resilience researcher, has noted that children need manageable amounts of stress to develop coping skills. The key word is manageable. We’re not talking about trauma or neglect. We’re talking about the normal challenges of growing up, experienced without excessive parental intervention.
Adults who had this tend to approach major transitions with curiosity rather than dread.
6) Resolving conflicts without falling apart
Conflict is inevitable. In marriages, workplaces, friendships, and families, disagreements will happen. The question is whether you have the skills to navigate them constructively.
Children who were allowed to argue with siblings, negotiate with friends, and occasionally clash with teachers learned something valuable. They learned that conflict doesn’t have to mean the end of a relationship. They learned to advocate for themselves while also listening to others. They learned that resolution is possible.
I’ve noticed that adults who were always rescued from social conflicts often struggle in this area. They either avoid disagreements entirely, letting resentment build, or they escalate quickly because they never learned the middle ground. The playground arguments we let our kids work through? Those were rehearsals for the much more complex negotiations of adult life.
7) Bouncing back from public embarrassment
We’ve all had moments we’d rather forget. The presentation that went sideways. The joke that landed flat. The time you called your teacher “Mom” in front of the whole class. These moments feel catastrophic when they happen, especially to children.
But here’s the thing: surviving embarrassment is incredibly liberating. Adults who learned early that they could live through humiliation tend to take more risks. They’re willing to speak up in meetings, try new things, and put themselves out there because they know that even if they fail publicly, they’ll survive.
Parents who rush to minimize every embarrassing moment, or who help their children avoid any situation where they might look foolish, are inadvertently raising adults who play it safe. And playing it safe, while comfortable, rarely leads to growth or fulfillment. Let your kids be embarrassed sometimes. Let them see that the world keeps turning.
8) Coping with the loss of loved ones
This is a heavy one, but it matters. Grief is part of life, and how we handle smaller losses prepares us for larger ones. The death of a pet. A friend moving away. A grandparent passing. These experiences, while painful, teach children that loss is survivable.
Adults who were sheltered from all grief, whose parents hid death and loss from them, often struggle more when they inevitably face it. They haven’t developed the emotional vocabulary or coping mechanisms. They haven’t learned that sadness, while terrible, doesn’t last forever.
I’m not suggesting we expose children to unnecessary pain. But when loss happens naturally, as it does in every life, allowing children to experience and process that grief, with support but without excessive protection, builds emotional strength. The adults who can sit with grief, who can comfort others in their loss, who can keep functioning even when their hearts are broken? They learned those skills through practice.
9) Handling criticism and feedback
Nobody loves being criticized. But the ability to hear feedback without crumbling is essential for growth. Adults who can separate their identity from their work, who can take notes from a boss or partner without becoming defensive, have a significant advantage.
This skill starts in childhood. Children who received honest feedback, who weren’t told everything they did was perfect, who learned that criticism is information rather than attack, grow into adults who can improve. They seek out feedback rather than avoiding it. They see it as a tool rather than a threat.
As noted by Carol Dweck in her research on growth mindset, children who are praised for effort rather than innate ability tend to embrace challenges and persist through difficulties. Part of this is learning to hear “this could be better” without hearing “you are worthless.” That’s a distinction that serves people well for their entire lives.
10) Finding meaning after major disappointments
Sometimes life delivers blows that can’t be fixed. The dream that doesn’t come true. The marriage that ends. The opportunity that passes you by. In these moments, the ability to find meaning and move forward is everything.
Adults who experienced disappointment as children, and who weren’t immediately offered a replacement or distraction, learned to sit with difficult feelings. They learned that disappointment doesn’t have to be the end of the story. They developed the capacity to grieve what was lost and then, eventually, to find a new path forward.
This is perhaps the most important skill on this list. Life will disappoint all of us at some point. The question is whether we have the internal resources to keep going, to find new dreams, to create meaning even when our original plans fall apart. Those resources are built in childhood, one small failure at a time.
The gift of letting go
Parenting is full of paradoxes, and this might be the biggest one: sometimes the most loving thing you can do is step back. Let them struggle. Let them fail. Let them feel the full weight of disappointment before they feel the full joy of overcoming it.
It’s not easy. Every instinct screams at you to help, to fix, to protect. But those small failures you allow today are building the resilience your children will need tomorrow. And trust me, as someone who’s watched this play out over decades, there’s no greater gift you can give them.
What small failure did you experience as a child that ended up serving you well as an adult?
