Book Nook - Eight Setbacks That Can Make a Child a Success

Michelle Icard's latest book, Eight Setbacks That Can Make a Child a Success (publishing 8/22), provides a very helpful playbook for caregivers helping their kids work through struggles.

Distilled from Michelle’s decades of experience working with tweens, teenagers, and families, it offers specific and unexpected advice about what to say, what not to say, and what to do to help children in eight categories of tense situations, including a three-step approach to any kind of failure: Contain, Resolve, and Evolve.

·   Contain: Affirm your child, gather the facts, and control the narrative.

·   Resolve: Explain what went wrong, define clear consequences, teach them to apologize well, and develop a plan to rebuild trust. 

·   Evolve: Reaffirm and re-expand their rights, and establish rewards for good behaviors. 

Whether it’s an academic misstep like failing to apply oneself, or a social issue like an embarrassing use of social media, or a rebellious decision like missing their curfew or underage drinking, there is always a chance for a child to learn, to gain new and stronger decision-making skills, and for the parent-child relationship to get stronger in the process. Eight Setbacks That Can Make A Child A Success will help ensure that a child’s mistake or rebellion doesn’t become the headline of their childhood, but instead becomes a launch pad to a better future.

The book is divided into eight sections:

Failure to Show Concern for Others
Failure to Take Care of Their Body
Failure to Get Along with Their Family
Failure to Believe in Themself
Failure to Connect with Peers
Failure to Perform Well in School 
Failure to Follow the Rules
Failure to Handle Their Feelings

What I like about this book is that it's not just about things that happen to kids, but also things that are within a child's control - while relationships and school can have a lot of external factors, following rules and taking care of oneself are a lot more self-driven. These are situations that all kids face at some point, to some degree, and this book helps walk families through supporting kids through failures and turning them into springboards for something even better.