If we don’t show our kids ‘tough love’, aren’t we just setting them up to fail in life?

This question was at the heart of an online debate I’ve watched unfold this week.
Two distinct camps emerged: one in favour of listening to neuroscientific research, with the opposing side arguing that to work with, not against, brain activity and biochemistry equates to ‘making life easy’, and this isn’t how to prepare young people for a difficult world.

If you take the narrow ‘If you remove barriers, they’ll never learn how to overcome them’ mindset, I can see why that looks favourable.
If only it were that simple…

Despite some misplaced assumptions from the ‘tough love’ camp, I’m very much in favour of nurturing resilience in kids. What I don’t believe is that the way to do that is by putting obstacles in their way. In fact, that can backfire, sometimes spectacularly so.

Here’s why:
Most of the pro ‘tough love’ arguments referred to young people’s readiness for the ‘adult world’. And it’s a valid point, to an extent. But ‘high expectations’ still need to align with what’s possible and realistic.

The reason that children are not ready for the adult world yet is because they are still children.
To insist that their far-from-mature brains function in adult ways is not fair for anyone; it puts unrealistic expectations on both parents and professionals, as well as them.

We’d never expect a learner driver to get behind the wheel for the first time and know how to handle all the challenges of driving.
We teach incremental skills to prepare them for the next step.
So, yes, while our job is to help our kids prepare for the lives and the world ahead of them, the size of the challenge has to be relative to the ability to overcome it.

When we make it easy for children to fail, it often teaches them – inaccurately – that there is something wrong with them; they are ‘behind’, ‘no good at this’, or somehow flawed or inadequate. And that can leave a deep and life-long imprint on their self-identity which is why, IMO, it is profoundly unethical.

What to do instead…
There may be any number of reasons why young people’s individual developmental needs are what they are but, as much as we are able, we need to meet them where they are.

I whole-heartedly acknowledge, both as a parent and a professional, that this is highly inconvenient and sometimes impossible when we’re raising children within systems that demand that they all follow the same – frequently unrealistic and wholly unevidenced – straightforward trajectory.

But that doesn’t change the truth that no brain – child or adult’s – can do what it is not neurologically capable of.

Some young people will make progress much quicker than others.
Some are more competent, compliant, motivated, energetic, interested and engaged.
But comparing them and making the same subsequent demands of all of them is, quite frankly, absurd.

Most children will do well if they can. And most are doing the best they can under their own unique, and often inconveniently challenging circumstances.
They are not so dissilimar from us grown-ups in that way…

If only for our own sanity, let’s all try to hold that in heart and mind. 

PS) Gems like this land directly in your inbox when you’re a Well Within Reach subscriber.
Sign up below AND get my FREE pdf ‘When My Brain Changes, I Change’!