by Dian 1 Comment

Is Your Lazy Parenting Setting Your Kids Up To Fail?

This is one of my first rants, so buckle up!  I have a lot of opinions about a lot of stuff and I think I’ll be sharing them more.  

I think we are doing our kids a disservice as parents,  and setting them up to fail AND I think it’s lazy.  In my opinion, we want our lives to be easy, but we are using the kids as an excuse and say we’re doing it for them.

Here’s what I mean.  When I was kid, not everyone got a trophy just for being on the team.  Not everyone got chosen to BE on the  team.  In fact, some people were even cut from the team!  Shocking, I know!

But, what I have seen over the past 30 years raising my kids is that all of the kids get a trophy for participating in anything, and everyone gets to play every game, and some organizations don’t even keep score for fear it might hurt someone’s feelings… really?!

This is what I am talking about, we are setting them up for failure.  Listen, they are gonna fail, they won’t all be chosen for the promotion, they won’t all get their dream job, some of them will be fired.  There will be people in the world who just don’t like them, and that’s okay, it happens.  Unfortunately we as parents aren’t allowing them to fail, we can’t teach them how to handle rejection, failure or disappointment, if they never experience it.  BUT, the worst part here is I think we are not allowing these things because we are too lazy  to mend their broken heart or teach them how to overcome being cut from a team because they weren’t good enough.  It’s easier for us to not have them disappointed or sad or broken, but, they weren’t put here for our lives to be easier.  Parenting is hard, childhood is hard – we need to BE the parents, we need to say no, and tell them to get over it, when needed.

Why in the world would we raise them up to think that life is a box of chocolates and then turn them out in the world, and they have NO idea of what’s coming, and then… they have no skills to handle it when things don’t go their way.  THEN we say get over it, grow up, be an adult…. we never taught them how.  We wanted their childhood to be nice, and sweet, and rosy… but, for them?  Or was it easier on us?  It’s hard to be the bad guy sometimes, but, we have to do it to help mold them into thriving members of society.

Have you thought about it?  Is Your Lazy Parenting Setting Your Kids Up To Fail?