5 Ways to Help Girls Accept Failure and Rejection as Part of Developing a Growth Mindset

Co-Authored with Dr Emma Hill, Educational Psychologist at ELLES Psychology

For girls aged 8 to 12, failure and rejection can feel personal and painful – a lost race, a wrong answer, a friendship wobble, all of it can shake their confidence. It’s natural as a parent to want to step in and soften the blow, but avoiding failure doesn’t help them grow. Learning to face it and process it, with the right tools and support, does.

Dr Emma Hill, Educational Psychologist and co-founder of ELLES Psychology, says, “Helping girls understand that mistakes aren’t a sign they’re not good enough, they’re a sign they’re learning, can be life-changing. Growth mindset is about separating their identity from the outcome.”

But to help girls develop this mindset, we also need to take a look at how we respond as parents. You’ve probably heard of helicopter parenting – hovering over our children to shield them from discomfort or difficulty. But there’s a newer version too: lawnmower parenting – where we try to clear every obstacle before a child even sees it.

Both come from a place of love and protection, and it’s so hard not to instinctively throw a force field around our children when things get tough. But in trying to protect our children, we can accidentally stop them from developing resilience. If girls never get the chance to fall, fail or feel frustrated, they don’t get to learn how strong and capable they actually are and they don’t get to embed the key tenets of resilience before they reach adulthood.

5 Ways to Help Girls Accept Setbacks and Develop a Growth Mindset

1. Talk openly about failure – yours and theirs.

Let them know that everyone messes up sometimes. Share your own stories of failure and what you learned from them.

2. Praise effort, not outcome.

Swap “You’re so clever” for “You worked really hard on that” or “I loved how you kept going.” This builds identity around persistence, not perfection.

3. Let them struggle (a bit).

It’s okay for things to be hard. Let her sit with a challenge and be there to cheer her on, not solve it for her.

4. Reframe rejection.

Didn’t get the part in the school play? Not invited to the sleepover? Rather than rushing to fix it or figure out what went wrong, sit with her in it. Acknowledge how it feels and gently remind her: this doesn’t define you. It’s okay to be disappointed or sad or frustrated, and it’s okay to move forward without needing to change anything about who she is.

5. Use the word ‘yet’.

“I can’t do it… yet” keeps the door open and reminds her she’s still learning and growing. 

Giving girls space to fail is one of the greatest gifts we can give them. Not because we want them to struggle but because we want them to trust themselves (and still like themselves) when they do.