Failure is to be avoided at all costs

Like anything, learning how to fail is best done at an early age. That way, you get used to it and learn that it's part and parcel of life.

I avoided failure like the plague and studiously avoided situations in which I was likely to fail. I remember racing against my brother and 2 family friends. I was a sprinter back in the day so that meant I had a fast start, but endurance was not one of my strong suits. One by one, they overtook me and once I had been relegated to last, I metaphorically raised the white flag and stopped running.

Recently, I watched a documentary on Child Geniuses and I found it particularly disturbing that one family celebrated their child's passing of an exam by buying them a roomful of presents (I kid you not!) - the children's birthdays were not as celebrated. I found the mother particularly creepy because she seemed to define her children by how well they excelled academically and she had already pre-ordained their careers. Her children are under pressure not just to pass their exams, but to ace them. Those children will grow up associating academic prowess with parental approval (of course when you reach a certain age, you no longer care about such things) - so much for unconditional love. To those children, and countless others like them, failure is not an option.