In general, I think that this is good advice. However, there are some things that a parent shouldn't just let a child fail at if it is outside a known pattern o

In general, I think that this is good advice. However, there are some things that a parent shouldn't just let a child fail at if it is outside a known pattern of behavior. For instance, if a kid is a good athlete and suddenly is horrible at baseball, it shouldn't be chalked up to "he is a kid, he needs to learn to overcome." To be fair though, I feel like a lot of parents are far too quick to intervene. Intervention in "failure" should only come when it is clear similar effort isn't producing similar results and there may be other factors at play. An example from my own life. I graduated high school with a very good GPA. I was always a good student, did my homework, etc, etc. However, my Sophomore year I ran into a horrible Spanish teacher. I tried consistently, studied nightly (reviewing vocab with my mom, etc) and got Cs and Ds in the class. I worked hard. My mom had no issues with the resulting grades. She did take umbrage at my teacher's belittling of me. I was continually accused of not caring, not studying, being lazy, and being stupid. Nothing could have been further from the truth. My mom knew I struggled with this, but it was not due to a lack of effort. She intervened with the school multiple times due to my teaher's treatment of me. I don't think that was a bad thing. We later discovered that I have (what qualifies as) a learning disability when it comes to language and auditory processing. Basically, it is exponentially more difficult for me to hear the differences in how things are pronounced, tone, accent, etc. This is most likely from my dozens of ear infections and two ear surgeries as a child. I actually was exempt from language requirements in University due to this. Again, I was a very good student in other aspects and I was trying. Sometimes, I wish my mother had intervened more and maybe said, "this is odd. She doesn't fail like this. Something else is wrong here. With this effort, she shouldn't be failing." But, it was a slight blip with an otherwise above average student. I see why she didn't worry all that much. As an aside, I can't really blame parents all that much for quickly intervening. The cost of failure as a 14 year old is much higher than it was even 14 years ago when I was that age. Kids cannot eascape one bad semester when applying for college. It doesn't matter if grades and activities the followings years were markedly improved. Even getting into good state schools is quite competitive. If you had 2 good years, there will always be someone who has 3.