THE 24th tip in the 31 days to becoming a better dad is to teach your kids the value of failure.

Too many people believe that failure is a bad thing. Like discipline , failure is an integral part of the growth process. Without failure, you will never know what not to do. Without discipline, you will never have the resolve to not do those things again.

In conversation, I always ask the naysayers of failure where they would be without the failures in their life. From learning to walk to figuring out your best career path, failure was the catalyst that got us on the right path. Indeed, you don't tell a child they failed when they fall down as they learn to walk. You encourage them to try again until they succeed. Not a single one of us skipped the failure stage, yet we are all walking.

Too often, our society paints failure as the end when in reality it is the beginning. Those that are willing to try again invariably make the necessary improvements until finally they reach their goals. Take the time to explain to your children that everyone fails, and that as long as they try their best and don't give up, they will succeed.

Celebrate the failures in their lives (and your own). By encouraging them to take the necessary risks on the road to success and be willing to fail, you will raise children that more than likely will face the world eager to follow their dreams and thank their parents for helping them do so.

As John Keats said, "Don't be discouraged by a failure. It can be a positive experience. Failure is, in a sense, the highway to success, inasmuch as every discovery of what is false leads us to seek earnestly after what is true, and every fresh experience points out some form of error which we shall afterwards carefully avoid."

DAD TALK