The parenting trope of telling children they can achieve anything backfires, especially when coupled with shielding them from failure. Children perceive this as disingenuous pandering, which erodes trust and can make them feel their parents secretly view them as incapable.
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A powerful framework for raising resilient individuals is to separate self-worth from performance. Build immense self-esteem by praising character traits (e.g., kindness), while simultaneously enforcing radical accountability for failures (e.g., "the pitcher was better than you"). This creates confidence that isn't shattered by losing.
Parents who track and financially support their adult children believe they are helping. In reality, this behavior communicates a lack of faith in their children's abilities, destroying their self-worth and trapping them in a cycle of dependency.
To raise children who thrive outside "the system," parents must shift from preventing failure to encouraging resilience. This means getting kids comfortable with losing through competition, de-emphasizing grades, and prioritizing work ethic and real-world experience over trophies.
People who sacrifice their ambitions for parental approval often grow to resent them, creating permanent distance. Facing short-term discomfort is better than a lifetime of regret and a strained relationship.
While well-intentioned, providing prolonged financial support to adult children communicates a belief that they are incapable of succeeding on their own. This cripples their self-esteem and ambition, making the enabling parent the root of the problem.
To combat a child's fear of failure, parents should actively pursue new skills they are not good at, like an adult learning to wake surf. This public display of struggle and persistence teaches a more powerful lesson than any lecture: it is okay not to be good at something initially, and the value lies in trying again.
Praising kids for being "smart" reinforces the idea that intelligence is a fixed trait. When these students encounter a difficult problem, they conclude they lack the "magic ingredient" and give up, rather than persisting through the challenge.
The most impactful gift a parent can provide is not material, but an unwavering, almost irrational belief in their child's potential. Since children lack strong self-assumptions, a parent can install a powerful, positive "frame" that they will grow to inhabit, becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Pediatrician Donald Winnicott argued that children must learn to handle frustration and disappointment. A "perfect" parent who shields a child from all difficulty inadvertently robs them of the chance to develop coping mechanisms for the real world.
Shaka Senghor introduces the concept of "well-intended prisons"—actions that seem helpful but are actually restrictive. A helicopter parent, for example, thinks they are protecting their child but is actually preventing them from developing resilience and making their own choices.
