Welcome to Kelly Corrigan Wonders. I'm Kelly Corrigan, and today I'm wondering about failure,

ours, and also our children's. My thought partner is Michelle Eichord. She has a degree in

education. She's worked with parents, children, and teachers for 20 years, creating curriculum and programs that help them better navigate their lives. She's a writer for the Today Show

Parenting Team, NBC News Learn, CNN Science and Wellness, and the Washington Post. She's also the author

of three books, including the newest one, eight setbacks that can make a child a success,

what to do and what to say to turn failures, in quotes, to character-building moments.

This is an invaluable playbook for anxious parents everywhere, ensuring that a child's mistakes

or rebellions don't become the headline of their childhood, but instead,

a launch pad for a better future.

You've written a book about failure. There are eight different kinds that you sort of draw out

here, kindly not taking us into the hundreds that you might have. And I only want to talk about

three, partially because I don't want to give away the whole book, but partially because there's

only so much time in this podcast. But before we get there, I want to talk about sort of overall

notions of failure and reactions to failure. So let's talk about avoidance and deflection.

Sure. So I think it's a very natural reaction to messing up, to failing, to face planting,

to try to hide it. And another thing that we try to do is we try very hard to avoid it. And so we spend a lot of our human energy

instead of embracing failure, instead of learning about failure, instead of figuring out how to

grow from failure, trying to disguise it. And so much of that is wrapped up in how we're

afraid other people will perceive our failures.

What is impression management?

It's how hard we try as humans to put our best foot forward and be likable and appear successful.

And that is not a bad thing.

...