Reese Witherspoon wears many hats. She’s an actress, producer, business woman, philanthropist, book club aficionado, and mother of three. Oh, and she’s also an author! Her latest book is a children’s book called Busy Betty and the Circus Surprise. While promoting the book on a podcast called Good Inside with Dr. Becky, Reese discussed her own childhood as well as the “power of letting kids struggle.” While talking about the latter, Reese gave an example of how she once helped her daughter Ava learn a lesson from failure.
Reese — who often shares insights into mom life on social media — began the chat by saying that all three of her children have very different personalities. Without specifying who, the Oscar winner said: “I have one very introverted kid, very quiet. I have a very social kid. And I have a kid who’s very talkative, very inquisitive, and like, almost endlessly curious.”
Though Ava and Deacon are grown up now, Reese reflected on raising her kids over the years and said it’s a parent’s job to “know your players.”
“Each one of your kids is gonna be totally different… As parents, it’s our job not to make them conform to who we want them to be — it’s our jobs to figure out who they are and help them play to their strengths,” she explained. “I see this a lot with parents. I don’t know when we stopped letting our kids fail,” the actor began, before reflecting on lessons from her own upbringing. “I learned so much from the paper I didn’t turn in, or the demerits I got so I got a detention,” she said. “I was suspended from school when I was in fifth grade for talking in class and being disruptive and writing creative notes and passing them to my friends.”
Looking back on her suspension, Reese said her mom and dad didn’t attempt to defend her actions or fight back against the school’s decision, but instead, they forced her to “sit in it and feel uncomfortable.” Despite being difficult, this experience helped inform how Reese would eventually raise her own children.
“I think learning from failure is actually a valuable tool that you can’t take away from kids,” she said. “You rob them if you don’t let them sit in the discomfort of the experience.”
After this, Reese gave a specific example of how she put this into practice when her daughter, Ava, desperately wanted to be good at basketball. Despite practicing hard, she recalled that Ava found the sport really difficult. “She couldn’t do the layups, she just couldn’t get the coordination with the dribbling — she just didn’t like it,” she explained. After her last game of the season, Reese recalled that Ava “went home and laid down on the bed and started to cry” because she was the only person who didn’t score any points.
“‘I didn’t score one goal, and everybody scored goals this entire season and I didn’t score any goals,’” she recalled her saying. When dealing with this, Reese decided it was best to be honest and show her daughter the importance of accepting failure.
“I said, ‘You know what… maybe you’re not good at basketball.’ She was like, ‘What! How can you tell me I’m not good at something?’” she remembered. “I was like, ‘It’s actually really important to learn what you’re not good at.’”
I kinda chuckled while reading this, imagining that in Reese’s head, her circle is basically other famous parents and their potential nepo babies. Some of these parents hire people to take the SATs for their kids and have their assistants call their friend’s assistants to get them jobs. In all seriousness, I’m assuming she’s talking about overprotective moms who are dubbed “helicopter parents” because they hover around their children, controlling their lives to make sure they don’t fail. When I was in my mid-20s, I once witnessed a peer’s mother tell her that she had done her resume and was applying for jobs as her because she didn’t think this peer was trying hard enough to get one. It was wild because neither of them had any self-awareness while talking about it in front of me.
Anyway, I think that when you’re teaching your children life skills, it’s absolutely important to teach them how to deal with disappointment, failure, and being honest with themselves about their strengths and weaknesses. And yes, children are very different from one another. I see it in how my own kids process and react to things like frustration. My older son will get upset and quit, refusing to keep trying while my younger son keeps at something until he gets angry and acts out. Sadly, there is no exact copy + paste method to parenting. It’s okay to let them fail as long as you’re there to support them through how to process and react to their failure. If you’re interested in hearing Reese’s full interview with Dr. Becky, you can check it out here.
Although I’m not a great fan of hers she is absolutely right you learn from mistakes and missteps. You can then correct course and move forward. Unfortunately there are some who will continue to make mistakes and not learn. Glad my two children are grown and now have children of their own and I enjoy watching how they deal with the mistakes and missteps lol.
Something like what happened to Ava is a good thing to fail at. It’s low stakes, and no one is in harm’s way from the failure.
I don’t think helicopter parenting or “not letting kids fail” is a completely new thing, I just think its more prevalent now maybe? IDK, my mom’s best friend as I was growing up had kids my age (and my brother’s age ) and we were all good friends. It wasn’t that those kids werent “allowed” to fail. It was more…..why would they ever fail when they were the smartest, the best, most talented, etc? Even to this day I have issues with those two because their every comment is from the POV of someone who was told they were perfect from day 1. and I knew quite a few like that growing up. I used to get mad that my mom didn’t promote me as perfection more, LOLOL.
Anyway, I do let my kids fail but I also don’t think there is anything wrong with softening the blow a bit or helping them succeed in something they want to do, but I’m also not doing it for them.
This crap about not letting kids fail happened in the mid/late 90’s. During this time they stopped failing kids in school (no more being held back) and stupid participation ribbons is all sport/track events. This has been happening for years and luckily the later Millennials saw the writing on the wall and had a lot of Gen X noise in our timeline to create a sense of failure, evaluate and re-group to move forward with lessons learned and live life. Children that cannot handle life are a product of our society (societal norms).
She raises good points but everytime I see something about her I always think back to the time her and the ex husband got arrested and she tried the whole ‘don’t you know how I am?’ With the cops.
Miss Witherspoon Kinda showed her true colors there.
Not a real fan of hers but seeing who many cops are I kinda don’t mind her rant.
Oh man, going through this with my own college kid. He’s always dreamed of being in a certain STEM profession, and he’s just absolutely sucking at those classes at university. Absolutely failing. I’ve tried to help him troubleshoot what the issues are, what he needs help with, what resources he needs to succeed, etc. We looked into whether he has undiagnosed adhd, or depression, because he’s telling me he’s having trouble even settling down to do the work in these super-hard courses.
I finally – gently – suggested that maybe this failure is simply because this isn’t the major for him? That maybe it’s just too hard for him and doesn’t play to his strengths and interests? Because when he truly likes something he’s amazing at it? He decided to change his major and he’s already doing so much better. And his mental health is so much better, too. He listened to what the failures were telling him, while investigating all possible causes.
Our job as parents is to guide our kids, and teach them how to find their own answers to their problems. Failure is a teaching lesson, but it’s not exactly a curated lesson, is it? And sometimes what we learn from failures are the wrong lessons that hurt us long-term (eg. “I fail because I’m stupid, maybe I should quit trying.”)
My parents were laissez-faire and let me experience failure and consequences without any real advice or involvement, convinced I’d figure it out eventually. Some things I did, some things took me DECADES of pain and mistakes to figure out. I really could’ve used some more insight and guidance from them. Throwing your kid into the deep end of the pool might teach them to swim, but is it the best way to create good swimmers?
Somewhere in between laissez-faire and bubble-wrapping our kids is a happy medium. It’s a struggle to find it, though.
What’s really hard there is that at too many universities those intro classes are made deliberately hard to “weed out” people who they don’t see as future superstars in the field. It’s incredibly shortsighted and contributes greatly to the average American’s poor knowledge of science.
As a professor, I’d like to second Concern Fae. Some majors are faced with too many students and not enough resources, so the intro courses are all deliberately designed to make people fail. Shannon, I’m glad your son moved on to a department that doesn’t want people to fail, but also assure him that the deck was stacked against him.
I mildly disagree with weeder courses not being a good thing. I have a PhD in sciences and barely passed Calculus, physics and chemistry (organic chemistry is the devil!). Biology was my thing and I HAD to get through all those other courses to keep moving forward in the field I was interested in.
While I still don’t really ‘get’ those courses, I did what I had to to pass….went to see the prof and TA during office hours, put my head down and grinded it out etc. In my case it wasn’t actually about learning the material (which I did in some amount of course and am grateful for it stimulating some parts of my brain that otherwise never would have) it was more about how to look at this obstacle and figure out if I could conquer it (and by conquer I mean ‘pass’). I had to figure out ways to achieve my goal when the inherent ‘skill’ or aptitude wasn’t there.
That skill is what got me through grad school.
Wow, this comment is really insightful and well expressed. I’m going to save this away for when I need to remind myself….or learn how to best help my kids deal with failure/frustration. YES! They need more than just being allowed to fail. Thank you!
Our daughter will give up if it’s not easy. We have to encourage her to try again. For example I took the both of them to play tennis this summer and they’d never done it so I was teaching them how. Our son got it right away but our girl was not happy with herself. She started sulking and I explained to her that it takes practice. After awhile she finally started getting it and having fun, and by the end said she loved tennis.
I also had an experience last year with the marching band director. Once again daughter was not practicing at home so she was behind the others. This can have a hugely negative impact during competition season – all directors are literally insane about getting to state. She told me if our daughter couldn’t keep up she would have to sideline her at competitions. I immediately said “oh I agree, totally.” Director was SHOCKED. She told me most parents would give her a hard time about that. I replied “I can only tell her she needs to practice at home, I can’t force her. If she’s not pulling her weight and being a reliable teammate, she shouldn’t get to be on the field. But I will tell her what you said.” Guess what? That’s what our kid needed to hear. She started practicing at home. Had she not – she wouldn’t have been allowed to compete.
While I know Reese speaks from a vantage point of ridiculous privilege, she is right that parents have stopped letting their kids fail. We want to protect them and keep them safe but also we have to know the difference between actual harm versus learning opportunities. We won’t always be there. They have to learn to trust their own instincts and they have to learn the hard way sometimes so they can have that experiential knowledge to protect themselves later.
A few years ago I attended a science symposium about the value of failure. It was a whole day of scientists from various disciplines describing how multiple failures led to their most important discoveries. There was a large high school group in the audience and the keynote speaker told them that if they weren’t prepared to fail, then science is not for them.
I used to hate school projects for this reason. I’m talking about the ones that involved getting a big tri-board and making a visual presentation with it. The parents at my kids’ elementary school pretty much always helped their kids with it. I thought mine should do it on their own, though I was happy to offer a little help and guidance. It didn’t play to their strengths at all, and theirs always ended up looking a lot less polished than the others.
I never challenged a grade if my kid got a bad or mediocre one on something. It amazed me how many parents would go to bat for their kid over a grade. I figured they were getting the marks they deserved. Unless I had some reason to think a teacher had it out for my kid, why should I question it? If they wanted to do better, they needed to work harder. I did get them help and tutoring if they seemed to need it, but I would never ask a teacher to give my child a higher mark than was warranted.
I will never forget when we were supposed to decorate pumpkins in kindergarten or 1st grade. My son was making a cat in the hat pumpkin. I cut out pieces for the felt hat, but let him do the gluing and painting. When I saw all the other pumpkins, I was shocked at how nice they were. All the other kids came up and told my son how much they liked his though. They were too young to be disingenuous, so I tried to take something from that.
When the world wouldn’t let them course correct. I’m not a parent but over the years you can see a change. Everything is documented. Mistakes follow you. Take college. Very few schools offer “academic bankruptcy”.
People don’t let their kids “fail” for a plethora of reasons and make no mistake it started with the boomers. People make fun of millennials b/c we were all given a trophy well, no team will give a kid a trophy b/c the kid cried about it, no it was the boomer parent who made a fuss. Teaching now is awful b/c so many parents of gen z (who are raised by gen x) always push back on any feedback given by teachers. Not every boomer or gen x is like this but enough to the point its easier to just give them what they want hence the trophy comment and teachers constantly complaining how this generation is “built different” (who raised the kids that enabled them to be this way?) . Make no mistake millennials will also eff up their kids (one of the big ones being posting their entire kids lives online).
One of the reasons ppl refuse to allow their kids to fail is b/c not everyone can afford it. In an ideal world everyone would raise their kid to follow their passions but that’s just not feasible for the majority. Who here can house/feed/clothed/pay their kids bills well into their 20s possibly early 30s to find their passion? B/c let’s be real ppl can’t find their passion in 5 years or less. They need time and time in a capitalistic country means money. So we tell our kids to play it safe, find a stable profession that pays decent that you wouldn’t mind doing and in your spare time you can do your passions. Well what they don’t tell you is that all jobs now are incredibly demanding thanks to being “online” 24/7 that you are burnt out the last thing you want to think about is another project/task even if its one you’re passionate about.