You hear all the time that it is a competitive world out there and rightfully so. My question is, “if that is the case, why aren’t we raising our children to get the point?” Why are they consistently given a trophy for just showing up?

Of course we want our children to have a great life. You know, better than we had. I am not sure that is going to be the case. For the most part we have had a great life. I don’t even think it is useful to compare generations. A huge part of growing up is learning how to deal with our failures. If you don’t have any you are dead already.

Our failures are where we learn to take responsibility for ourselves. To do what it takes to have what you want. I don’t think the teams I coached learned anything from winning. The best team I coached at UNLV lost its first two games of the season. Different reasons for each. I learned a ton from those disappointments. We recovered to to win our next 10 or 11 in a row. We bounced back.

Enough of the ancient history. A parent’s job is simply to “get them grown.” What I mean by that is they can manage their survival. Of course, we want more than just that for them. The gift that you can give them is if they want more than that they need to figure out how to earn it, or at least present a viable way to do that other than “write me a check” or put it on your credit card.

It requires taking responsibility for everything in their lives. Increasing their capacity to do that for themselves. You cannot take the bumps out of anyone’s road. You are, in a way, crippling them. What happens when you aren’t around? What happens when they are told they aren’t getting their job done?

Working with individuals and teams for over 50 years has allowed me to make an observation. In general, today’s athletes have a lesser capacity to bounce back from adversity than those 20 or more years ago. Don’t point out the current champions who are doing great. The young people I am talking about are not going to be featured on the front page of your local newspaper. And, there are way more of them. They have more information and training than their predecessors and they struggle with taking responsibility or bouncing back.

Golden Question: If it is your life what are you going to do about it (the current situation)? Only step in when they don’t have the capacity to act.

Check out lulu.com for Coach Todd’s books. You might like “The Art of Losing.”