Kids Need to Experience Minor Setbacks and Disappointments

They say whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger.

And I don't think that's true for major trauma, but I do think it's true for life's minor disappointments and setbacks and failures.

And I think often we're not really giving kids much of a chance to experience disappointment and loss and setbacks in a way that will help prepare them for the bigger trials that life is going to have for them in the future.

And in their book, The Coddling of the American Mind, Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukenioff talk about the problem of safetyism, that as parents and to some extent as educators, but I think this is mainly a parenting thing, we try to protect our kids from too much, right?

We don't just try to protect them from the big traumas.

We try to protect them from any little disappointment.

And that's really counterproductive, right?

When we don't give kids the opportunity to practice being disappointed, to practice losing, to practice dealing with the big feelings that that generates, well, they may be in a situation where needing to handle that well is really important, right?

Like if you don't get the part you want in the school play or if you don't get the job you want or if you don't get admitted to the university you want or the program you want, Like we need kids to bounce back when they deal with those disappointments.

And if we don't give kids any opportunity to experience disappointment, they're not going to have any practice with that muscle.

So the idea of safetyism is the idea of kind of like bubble wrapping kids and protecting them from failure.

And it's not just about protecting them from danger.

It's about steering them into things that they will be successful with so that they never have to experience any kind of disappointment or failure.

And if kids are in sports, if they're in any kind of competitive activity, they're going to get a lot of those experiences.

And that's a really good thing.

But a lot of our kids, I'm especially concerned about our public school students who are not in any activities at all that will expose them to disappointment.

I was helping with a school activity yesterday.

last year, and it was extremely low stakes.

There was no competitive aspect to it at all, but it was a type of performance.

And I won't say what it was, but I remember a lot of the students being so nervous.

You know, it was barely a performance, but they were so nervous to be in front of other people to have the spotlight on them.

And I realized for a lot of kids, there's like no opportunity in their school day or in their personal life When the attention is on them, the stakes are somewhat raised.

And of course, they're not high stakes, like a school assignment or a school play or something like that is not super high stakes.

But they need that opportunity to be disappointed and to be nervous and to get over their nerves and to try and fail and try again.

And right now, it seems like all of those opportunities are extracurricular, right?

They're things...

that don't happen in the school day and kids can sign up for those extracurriculars, but a lot of kids don't.

So I'm curious to your thoughts, how do we make sure that more kids get the opportunity to participate in things that will build those muscles and help them experience disappointment and process that?

So I'm concerned about the kids who are not involved in stuff and I'm concerned about the kids who are involved in everything and the parents pave the way for them and helicopter parent and make everything too easy.

So let me know what you think.