The challenge as a parent is letting your kids fail in the right

In the councils of old, elders taught that love is not a cage but a compass. So when Rob Lowe says, “The challenge as a parent is letting your kids fail in the right ways because that’s where we do most of our learning,” he names the paradox at the heart of wise care: to guard a child from ruin while refusing to steal from them the storms that make a sailor. The heart longs to catch every fall; wisdom chooses which falls to allow. For without the ache of effort and the sting of error, strength lies dormant like seed that never meets the plow.

The ancients would say that courage grows by weights, not wishes. A child spared all strain becomes clever in words and weak in will. To let them fail “in the right ways” is to set the conditions of growth: boundaries firm as a shoreline, freedoms wide as a field. You do not remove the wind; you teach the mast to meet it. You do not quench the fire; you set a hearth around it. Thus the parent’s challenge is stewardship, not control—tending the flame so it warms and does not burn.

Consider the story of the Wright brothers in their Dayton workshop. Their father gave them a toy helicopter and a blessing for tinkering; the city gave them scrap; the field gave them crashes. They failed often—propellers shattered, wings buckled, pride bruised—but their failures were right: incremental, observed, reflected upon. Each tumble taught lift and drag, balance and brace. What might have been a single humiliating catastrophe became a ladder of small defeats, each one a rung toward Kitty Hawk’s first flight. Here we see the curriculum of learning that only honest failure can write.

Or look to the schools of Maria Montessori, where children handle self-correcting materials that quietly reveal error. The adult does not swoop in to “fix”; the child discovers, adjusts, tries again. This is letting kids fail in the right ways: the consequences are real but not ruinous, the feedback is immediate and kind, and dignity is preserved. Over time, attention deepens, hands grow sure, and the child’s pride rests not on praise but on proof. Such training makes citizens who can face the world’s complexity without panic.

But take heed: not all failure instructs. Failure without reflection hardens into shame; failure without safety breeds fear. The right ways require three companions—meaning, margin, and mentorship. Meaning: the task should matter enough to engage the heart. Margin: the stakes must leave room to try again. Mentorship: a watchful elder helps the learner turn pain into pattern. Where these three prevail, learning thrives; where they are absent, a stumble becomes a scar.

From this saying, draw a simple law: prepare the path less than you prepare the traveler. Let the child meet friction and form; let them pay the small prices that protect them from great debts later. The parent’s challenge is to build a world of graduated difficulty: shoelaces before bicycles, bicycles before keys; small chores before wages, wages before credit. You are the keeper of thresholds—opening them not when you are comfortable, but when they are ready.

Let counsel become practice. Start a “try-then-tell” ritual: when a kid meets a problem, they try once before asking for help, then tell what they tried. Keep a learning ledger in which both victories and errors are logged with the same calm ink. Design safe labs for real life: a budget with training wheels, a stovetop lesson with a fire extinguisher at hand, a public speech to a friendly room. After each failure, sit with them and sort the pieces—what was within control, what was beyond, what one change would tilt the odds next time. In doing these things, you will honor the old wisdom Rob Lowe has framed anew: that the road to mastery is paved with permitted stumbles, and that the bravest love is the love that lets us fail our way into learning.