Life Lessons for Children

Failure is Part of Life

• Even though the t-ball coach may give your preschooler a trophy just for showing up, in life there are winners and losers. Learning how to accept failure, move on and turn things around for the next time is an important life lesson that she may not get from her teachers at school. Providing praise is part of your job as a parent, but you also need to rein it in when your child fails. Tell her a story about when you failed and what you learned from the failure. Make it age-appropriate and focus on what your child is going through. For example, if your first-grader flubs her vocabulary test, tell her about a time when you got a not-so-great grade. Use this as an opportunity to brainstorm ways that she can handle the failure in a positive way, suggests education coach Rebecca "Kiki" Weingarten on the website Working Mother. For example, suggest making a list of ways to improve her grades. Explain that failure, like success, is part of life.

Treat Your Friends Like Yourself

• Your 4-year-old snaps and rips the teddy bear out of his friends arms, your 11-year-old points and laughs when his pal trips and falls at school or your 16-year-old brushes off his former best bud for a new, "cooler" kid. While you might realize that these are all examples of ways to mistreat a friend, your child may not. Teach him that he should treat others as he would expect to be treated. Help him to see the errors of his ways through real-world examples. Ask him to think of a time when someone wasn't nice to him. By age 3 most children have the ability to demonstrate empathy. For example, your preschooler may recall a time when someone else wouldn't share with him, your middle school student may remember how embarrassed he was when a friend pointed out his folly and your teen may reflect on how another pal ditched him for a new group at school. Thinking about his own experiences helps a child to understand the consequences of his actions toward others.

Stand Up for Yourself

• As your child gets older, peer pressure becomes more of an issue. While some friends are positive influences, others may have a negative effect. While you may hope that peer pressure will never influence your child, if it does you can combat the lasting effects with a life lesson. Instead of oversimplifying the matter and telling your child to "just say no," talk about how she can change the situation and stand up for herself. This involves teaching your child how to act assertively. Talk about a time when you stood up for yourself and the positive effect that it had. Give her the real story and not just a glorified version in which you acted assertively from the get-go. This will help her to understand that standing up for herself isn't always easy. Let her know that being her own advocate demonstrates independence and self-confidence, and that it won't make her unpopular.

Life Takes Hard Work

• Your child sees you put a plastic card in a machine and out pops money. Even though it might seem like magic to a preschooler or young grade-schooler, your child needs to understand that money doesn't grow on trees -- or in a machine. Teaching your child that you have to work to get "things" from a young age will help him to value what he has. Help a young child learn this lesson by taking him along with you during a day of work. If you don't work outside the home, talk about different jobs and what people do to earn money. Instead of you showing a teen that hard work is a must, he can learn the lesson for himself.