另一个较低等级是在相互友好的竞争之间，也许我会赢，也许我会输，而输赢并不是重点，重点是与那些对我来说很重要的人所共度的时光。输掉一场友好的比赛，比如了一盘棋，并不应该感到愤怒。在这些较低等级中出现错误和失败是一段很好的经历，对孩子来说，当他们对自己的表现出现负面评价时，就需要从经验中收获一些积极的东西。

对于中等程度的严重性，孩子应该展开对自我及自我表现的批评。这些中等程度的活动包括音乐演奏会、锦标赛和学校作业。在这一阶段，应当鼓励孩子找出他们的错误，但是不应当将其归结为失败而，而是应将其标记为重要的学习经验。在这一层级，孩子不应当为这些错误而产生压力，但他们应当明白有些错误需要改正。从过去的错误中汲取经验，未来的表现应当更好。在这里，孩子们应当杜绝一次又一次的犯同样的错误。责任感、严肃性和自觉性成为这一等级的重要主题。在这个中等程度，自我对话是一个很好的练习。例如：“我很失望，我没有在数学考试中名列前茅。但是，我现在知道了，我需要更好的理解以便在期末考试中做得更好。我讨厌现在得到的低分，但我知道Bob获得了一个高分，也许我可以祝贺他，并请他帮助我找出我的错误。”

对于等级程度较低的事件，应当鼓励孩子们将失败或不足的感知，重新聚焦在这一事件中他们所感受到的积极方面。我必须强调，这需要时间和指导。

关于中等程度的事件，应当鼓励孩子界定其所感受到的情绪。在这一级别，感到悲伤、失望、不安、愤怒都是正常的。也许孩子可以找一个空房间，大声呐喊，把他们的情绪宣泄出来；也许孩子可以对着他们的枕头狠狠打上几圈，以发泄心中的挫败感。在这一层级，重要的是强调情绪应当有限度。孩子不能通过骂他们自己、贬低别人或损坏财物来让自己感觉好受一些。对于中等程度的事件，悲伤、失望或愤怒的情绪最多只能持续一个小时。

How should children handle modern day expectations? How should children handle failure? How should children manage their emotions when not making the cut? Children are constantly bombarded with illusory images of success. Children are constantly told to do better, try harder, and always give the impossible 110%. Unsurprisingly, children are, often, ill equipped to deal with the negative emotions of failure in a healthy manner.

A good start would be to understand the world through a child’s eyes. What are they seeing? More and more they are seeing images of bright, shiny, successful children wherever they look. The hero always wins in the movies. Every story read has a happy ending. People’s social media posts always look bright and happy. Success seems so easy for so many people. With enough saturation children begin to ask themselves, “Why am I having trouble when so many other people are not?” Children fail to understand these media driven images of success are illusory, and that the people in these images suffer most of the same troubles. Helping children understand the impact different mediums of media and entertainment have on their thought processes will help them to develop a more realistic expectation of life and success.

In addition to strengthening their ability to filter media messages, it is important that children know how to quantify their mistakes and failures. Some children judge themselves so harshly that they view every little mistake they make as an epic failure which leads them to feel tremendous stress. Other children take nothing seriously and therefore never learn from their failures to progress in life. Children need guidance in framing each activity with a helpful frame of mind by compartmentalizing their activities into levels of severity. For school and normal day-to-day life there are really should be only lower and medium levels of compartmentalizing occurring regularly.

Finally, once children learn to compartmentalize their activities according to levels, they can begin to assign appropriate feelings. This takes practice and a good deal of mentoring from parents. 

As young, courageous learners, children will make many mistakes and have some failures. The important thing to do is to help children embrace these mishaps as learning experiences from which they become stronger. Viewing these mishaps any different could harm the development of a positive self-concept, something that will be crucially important in their middle and high school years.