5 Keys to Teach Kids to Never Give Up

To achieve personal, social, or academic goals, kids need to learn to never give up. Here, we'll show you some tips.

Written and verified by the psychologist Elena Sanz Martín.

Last update: 27 December, 2022

Human beings have the natural instinct to go after their dreams, to surpass themselves, to set goals, and work to achieve them. This is the way, we manage to evolve and grow personally. However, the path isn’t always easy, and multiple obstacles may appear that make us want to throw in the towel. This is why you have to teach your children to never give up, so that they can achieve happiness and their own definition of success, despite the challenges.

If we want a child to persevere in any task, whether it’s a school activity, cognitive exercise, or sport, we need to teach them self-esteem and self-confidence. In fact, overprotection can make kids feel helpless and unable to achieve goals on their own. However, overly authoritative parenting can make kids afraid of making mistakes. Then, they might want to give up before they start.

Therefore, there are several aspects that kids need to work on from a young age to help them reach their full potential. Keep reading to learn about them.

Free will

Free will is the ability that lets someone decide what they want and change their behavior in order to achieve it. It’s closely related to motivation, and it’s the main engine that drives us to continue despite the bumps in the road.

On a daily basis, many situations arise that require willpower from kids: Getting up early to go to school, going to their extracurricular activity instead of playing, studying when they need to even if they don’t want to, etc. These are moments when they need to remember why it’s worth going against their immediate desires.

That is, they have to manage to focus their attention on the long-term consequences. For example, going to school and studying will help them train and have a good job in the future. Their after-school activity can help them exercise their body, feel healthier, and have a good time socializing with their classmates.

Effort

Even if a child’s clear about the long-term goal and has the will to achieve it, they need to know that reaching their goal will probably require effort. There are lots of different kinds of effort: Exerting themselves physically, acquiring new knowledge, overcoming fears, etc. In any case, they’ll have to get out of their comfort zone, and that can be scary and make them want to give up. So, it’s important to remind them that effort will help them improve and will make them feel proud of having managed to improve themselves.

Perseverance

We all wish that we could achieve our goals quickly and with minimal effort. What kids want is more pressing, since their patience and impulse control are less developed.

However, if you want to teach your children to never give up, you have to help them persevere. To do this, you can show them how to break their goals down into smaller, more achievable subtasks and reward them for the progress they make. This recognition will help them continue until they reach their final goals.

Learning from mistakes

Perfectionism is one of the qualities that can lead children to give up early. Also, kids that have this trait usually think mistakes are failures. So, when they fail, they feel frustrated, incapable, and incompetent. Remind your child that no one’s perfect, we all fail, and that failure is one of the most important parts of the journey. This will make it easier for them to move on.

Resilience

Unfortunately, even if children do everything properly, they won’t always get the results they were hoping for. In these moments, you need to teach your children to be resilient. That is, you need to teach them to come out stronger from those adverse circumstances.

Failing a test can be the push to learn better study skills. Also, not being accepted into a group of friends can help you decide what kind of people you really want to have around you, Each obstacle can provide important learning that makes us better.

Teaching your children not to give up brings them closer to happiness

Normally, we see constancy and perseverance as necessary to performing well in school. In addition to this, teaching your children to never give up will provide them with a valuable life lesson. Not only will it make them more likely to be successful in whatever they set out to do, but, above all, it will give them confidence in themselves and in their abilities. Without a doubt, this will make them happier people.