You can ask anyone who knew me back then and they’ll tell that by the time I was old enough to legally drive a car I was not lacking for self confidence. Some would say a little over-confident. Some of them would go as far as to tell you I was a little “cocky”. Truth be told, a lot of people who have known me as an adult would use the same word to describe me. I’m okay with that.
Looking back over my life, I’ve realized that the path to self confidence in my youth often started with experiences that were overtly negative in nature. Losing a game, being overlooked when teams were chosen for some playground sporting event, not being able to afford something…the list is seemingly endless.
The negatives you encounter in your life present you with a set of options. You can work to overcome those negatives, or you can accept that gut-wrenching feeling that burns through you and makes you feel inadequate and let it control your self-image. Here’s the beautiful thing…you get to CHOOSE which path you take.
I’ve been working since I was 12 years old. Someone laughed at me because I didn’t have the money to go somewhere or buy something. I found out what it was like to not be able to afford the things I wanted and I didn’t like it…so I fixed it.
One winter I suspended a golf ball from the ceiling of our basement with a piece of jute. Every night I spent hours hitting that golf ball with a broomstick sawed off to the length of a baseball bat. I’d been passed over that previous summer for the Little League All-Star team and decided that I needed to work harder on making consistent contact at the plate. My hand-to-eye coordination needed work…so I fixed it.
Those are just a couple examples of the thousand or more I could throw out there…but overcoming my many faults is not the point of this post. I’m not unlike the majority of the people my age. We all worked to overcome our challenges…to circumvent the negatives we encountered. We all faced different experiences, and we all found our own way to rise above them. For the most part we all became decent adults, living productive lives and raising families of our own.
BUT…What if there were no negatives to overcome in a child’s life though? What if children were given everything they wanted without working for it? What if we adjusted the education system so no child ever failed? What if we stopped keeping score in youth athletics and gave every child a trophy at the end of the season? What if we stopped allowing children to defend themselves against bullies?
So…we all know how I feel about the “No Child Left Behind – Everyone Gets a Trophy” society we live in, right? If you don’t, I’ll make a long story short for you: Bullshit policies like those are how you end up with a socialist on the campaign trail for the presidency. If you need clarification on that, just ask and I’ll knock the first domino over and give you play by play as they all fall.
If we remove the negatives from the lives of children how are they supposed to prove to themselves that they can rise above the obstacles in their lives? In today’s society it’s really not until High School that the youth are thrust into a competitive environment…and I honestly believe that the competitive environment in High School is found more frequently in athletics and arts programs than academics anymore. But, how many kids don’t even try out for the football team, the show choir, or the math club because they don’t believe in themselves due to the fact they never faced the negatives as a child and didn’t start building their self-esteem early in life?
So, about right now, everyone’s wondering how the Hillbilly got off on this tangent tonight, right? In a word, memories. I read something today that reminded me what it felt like to have the life sucked out of your soul at the age of 12. One little word used in an already awkward situation that was powerful enough to simultaneously embarrass you, make you question your worth and make you want to disappear from the social scene for the rest of your life. One little word…and that word is: “No”.
Today I read this: https://www.today.com/parents/sixth-grader-utah-couldn-t-say-no-when-asked-dance-t174793
I really had a hard time believing that. So I went and verified that story from no less than a dozen sources, but feel free to do the work again yourself if you’d like.
Now…as the parent of a daughter this pisses me off. In this day and age with all the arguments about a woman’s right to make decisions about her body…after decades of women fighting for equal rights and demanding respect in our society…with sexual images and videos readily available to any kid with a smartphone in his hand…who the hell is a principal at a middle school to tell my little girl that she has to get into an “intimate” situation with someone?
So…let me get this straight…in this particular education system Sally doesn’t have to learn proper grammar because no child gets left behind, but dammit, she will go rub up against “Participation Trophy King” Bobby if he asks her because we don’t want to embarrass the lad. So we’re teaching twelve year old females that they’re beholden to the wants, needs and desires of the males. Holy Shit….isn’t it a similar mindset that caused the women’s movement in the first place? What the hell is going on in Utah? I’m sure it’s not just one middle school in Utah…I’m waiting for the rash of follow up stories to start pouring out. Who in their right mind would set a policy like that? Surely someone in that school system had to have enough brain cells firing in the proper sequence to question the intelligence of that policy.
**sigh** Alright….I’m back…and I’m calm again.
There’s more to it than just that though, folks. I read all those different web pages discussing this situation and not one of them discussed the flip-side of the coin. That’s what prompted me to start tapping keys tonight. I think we can all agree that the message they’re sending to the girls is wrong on a LOT of different levels….but, I’m a little pissed about what that school’s policy deprives the boys of as well.
At age twelve, there are few things more terrifying than walking across an empty dance floor as your friends all watch you head into a group of your female classmates to ask one of them to dance. You’re risking a certain and very sudden social suicide. If she says “No”, you’ve just embarrassed yourself in front of all her girlfriends, all of your buddies, the chaperons, the DJ and you’re pretty sure it will end up on the front page of the school newspaper later that month so the rest of the world can laugh at you too.
BUT…this is one of those situations where character is built. This is where young men learn to deal with rejection on a very personal level. This is where they learn which friends are going to laugh at them when they’re down and which ones are going to help them up. In time they’re going to face the exact same circumstance again, and need to come to terms with the fact that sometimes the answer is just simply “No”. Sooner or later they’re going to have to learn to overcome THAT particular negative. The perpetuation of the species depends on those young men building enough self-confidence to continue to interact with the opposite sex despite the possibility of embarrassment and learn how to overcome romantic rejection at the same time. That’s one of those things that should be “hard-coded” into our DNA, but it’s not…it’s something we have to learn. How the hell can they learn how to deal with a negative like social rejection if the very chance of rejection has been taken off the table?
If they don’t learn this lesson in their youth, they’re forced to deal with it a few years later when the hormones are really kicking their ass. That rejection is going to be amplified exponentially when a shot of testosterone is added to the equation. Rejection amplified will be a much heavier load to bear…and if they don’t possess the coping mechanisms to deal with it, there’s a possibility it will break them in ways that can’t be repaired. A lot of life’s lessons are best learned at an early age. We do them no favors by making life easier for them or allowing the system to do so.
As adults it’s our responsibility to raise the next generation. Ladies and Gentlemen, we need to learn that letting our kids fail and teaching them to dust themselves off and regroup is not only okay, but necessary. We need to look very closely at the idiots who make the policies that govern the world our children travel through at EVERY level. From the school systems to the federal government, we need to ensure that our elected and appointed officials KNOW that character is developed through overcoming adversity and if they remove the obstacles from our children’s paths they’re do nothing more than crippling the next generation. More importantly, we need to teach those principles in the home…because some of those elected/appointed officials are counting on the next generation to be an emotionally crippled and adversity challenged mess. It’s easy to sway the opinion of a society that feels they NEED policies in place to remove the obstacles from their life. Every child needs to know that all they need is the brain in their head, a work ethic and the self confidence that comes from turning the negatives in their lives into opportunities to grow.
But to do that, we have to ensure we put the negatives back in their lives. If you love the kids, you’ve gotta let ‘em fail. They have to learn the lessons of life in their youth…and they can’t do that if we’re constantly “protecting” them from failure.
The best way to make them successful, Ladies and Gentlemen…allow them the opportunity to fail.