One of the athletes I coach was ranked going into the finals of the Hawaii High School Athletic Association swimming championships on March 5.

Before the meet, she told me she was aiming for third, not first. I was dumbfounded. She was terrified of disappointment — not of failure, which is a narrower category, but of not meeting a high expectation — and that fear prevented her from wanting even to try.

Our children and adolescents will not be good at everything they do for the first time, the second time, even sometimes the 30th time. If they are, they’re setting the bar too low.

Back in August, one of my English students told me she was worried about her advanced placement U.S. history exam. We were only two weeks into the school year, ten months out from the test, and she had learned about 2% of the content covered in the year-long course. Yet, she was already anxious about passing. I told her: Ask questions, work hard, and do your best. Aim for a 5. She scoffed — and was genuinely shocked at the suggestion.

“A 5!” she said. “Oh no, I’m aiming for a 3.” She’s thoughtful, curious and disciplined, so I asked why she set her sights so low. She replied, “I don’t want to be disappointed.”

Why are our young people so scared of disappointment? Has this fear created a generation of able underachievers? Parents and educators: If we want resiliency, we must teach children and adolescents how to set attainable goals and deal with and grow from setbacks.

Education researchers have long argued that student performance is directly proportional to expectations. High expectations positively affect academic achievement and social-emotional health both directly and indirectly. Research shows that the expectations of teachers, parents and peers raise self-esteem, feelings of self-efficacy and motivation, which have all been linked to learning and achievement.

But expectations cannot solely rest on the shoulders of teachers and parents; students also need to set their sights on realistically high targets. Untangling the gossamer threads of psychology here is beyond my expertise, and the topic is complicated and robust. Still, studies show that goal-setting encourages students to develop critical thinking and problem-solving skills and helps them better understand how to overcome challenges.

To help them, we must teach our children and adolescents how to set achievable goals. Vision board dogma and Instagram life coaches allege that simply visualizing your future is enough to get you there. But it’s not, as research from Gabriele Oettingen, a professor of psychology at New York University, has shown. Oettingen has created a program to help people realize their goals with a 76% success rate. I teach the program to all of my English students. It’s called WOOP, and Oettingen adds obstacle and planning phases to wish and outcome ideation.

Another solution to overcoming the stasis of disappointment is to teach students how to manage obstacles and not get overwhelmed and paralyzed by setbacks. Social media perpetuates the myth of easy, instant success; make sure students understand the road to success is paved with hard work, measured risk-taking and some discomfort. Psychology Today also advises parents and educators to share our own struggles and failures when helping children and adolescents navigate new challenges.

Let’s stop shielding our young people from struggle by mowing the path in front of them; instead, let’s teach them how to set attainable goals and give them strategies for dealing with challenging emotions so they can reframe obstacles as stepping stones to achievement.

Brooke Nasser is an English and newswriting teacher at Kalani High School; she also is a freelance filmmaker and journalist.