Camp Woodland Blog

Research indicates minor struggles now build confidence, resilience, and problem-solving skills later for kids. When we let children fail in developmentally appropriate ways, they don’t just learn how to handle failure — they learn how to recover from it.

Desirable Difficulties

Jessica Lahey, author of “The Gift of Failure,” points out that parents, logically, know failure is a learning opportunity. And, yet we still grapple with having our kids struggle. The intent is good – it comes from a place of love. It’s natural that we want to protect them. When we constantly step in, we also unintentionally teach kids learned helplessness. “We are telling them, ‘I don’t think you’re competent enough to do this yourself,'” Lahey says. Over time, kids internalize this belief, undermining their confidence and ability to handle challenges.

Kids need what Lahey calls “desirable difficulties” — challenges that feel hard but are within their ability to overcome. Guess where kids can experience these “desirable difficulties” in a supportive and caring environment? Camp is the PERFECT ecosystem to practice failure individually and as a group. Let me explain.

Individual Failure

It is rare for a camper to get up on skis, a kneeboard or wakeboard on the first try. First off, this activity requires that campers be at a certain skill level in swimming (to feel comfortable and adept at maneuvering in deep water). For some of the younger girls, this may take a year or longer to build up the skills of being a proficient swimmer in a lake setting.

Once campers have the swim skills necessary to give a more advanced water sport a go, it may take several days of multiple tries to get up only to face plant (and have a gallon of water go up your nose). It may take another round of Rec Swim periods to make a loop around the lake successfully (more face plants). For campers who want to challenge themselves even further, they may practice going in and out of the wake (with wipeouts being an imminent possibility) before they truly get the hang of it.

Group Failure
We gracefully fail together at camp every single day. Not every cabin earns a perfect “30” on inspection, gets chosen for “Best Dressed” on Sunday morning, or finds the “Mother Lode” during Gold Rush. Only one cabin receives the coveted 1st place award for “Lip Sync” or “Song Contest.” Paddling across Sand Lake for a cabin overnight canoe trip can be a feat in itself – not to mention getting a fire started quickly, putting up tents securely, and going to the bathroom in the woods.

Challenge by Choice

At Camp Woodland, failures and mistakes are not shamed or discouraged. Rather, it is quite the opposite. Missing the mark (by a little or a lot) is celebrated as an opportunity for growth. Sure we have levels in certain activities; however, at the end of the day, no “tests” are given or “grades” recorded. Campers have the choice to challenge themselves as little or as much as they want in any given activity. For campers who choose to work on passing levels in an activity, instructors are good at spotting when a skill has been mastered and can be done without hesitation vs when it is only demonstrated one time.

The idea of challenge-by-choice can be extremely rewarding and empowering. Campers typically make comparisons to earlier versions of themselves rather than measuring up to those who might be quite skilled in an area. Take archery, for example. There may be campers in the same class who are wishing they could simply hit the target and those who are shooting at 50 feet and trying for a given score or “qualifying” target.

One of my favorite things about having mixed ages and skill/experience levels in a class like archery is the mentoring that happens between campers. Being able to explain or demonstrate what you know to someone else helps with skill mastery. It is also really cool to see campers cheer each other on and recognize those small, yet important “wins” when they do something better today (have an arrow stick in the target) than they could yesterday (retrieve arrows from the grass).

Failing is the New Succeeding

Hearing the cheers when a camper is finally able to canter after the 12th try, return a ball using backhand on the 31st attempt, do a forward roll after struggling the 19 times prior, learn lines for a play after fumbling during the previous 17 rehearsals, coordinate a string of dance moves after 42 run-throughs, read the wind direction in sailing after 4.5 weeks, do a dive from the dock after the 21st bellyflop, paddle in the stern position in a canoe after spinning in circles for several classes in a row, and more is absolutely the B-E-S-T. You see, failure and mistakes are the stuff growth is made of at Camp Woodland!

We fail by ourselves and as a group. Difficulties become easier over time because we fail together in a supportive and caring community. If you would like your daughter to practice and get good at failing (the new succeeding), reserve a spot at Woodland for 2025!

Reference: https://www.popsugar.com/parenting/letting-kids-fail-49429258