This summer, while I was visiting my folks in San Diego, my dad said he wanted to talk to me alone for a few minutes. I braced myself for bad news, but it turns out he just wanted to tell me a story. His story.
Since he was diagnosed with lung cancer a few years ago, he's developed a philosophical side that I didn't see when I was growing up. He's been looking back at his life and trying to make sense of it all. What he's concluded—and what he shared with me—is that he feels "lucky."
He recounted the events of his life as a long series of lucky breaks. But they weren't the kind of luck you might expect. There were no winning lottery tickets, or sudden windfalls of fortune and fame. Mostly, they were obstacles that he'd overcome.
He felt lucky because he and his brother, at age 11 and 13, boarded a ship by themselves and sailed across the Pacific without coming to harm. Because he got tuberculosis just when new medicines became available to treat it. Because he completed his GED from a naval ship in WWII, and was able to go to college on the GI Bill. Because the money he saved and invested all his life put his sons through school and allowed him to retire in comfort. And even now, because his cancer was in remission.
How remarkable that he sees the greatest challenges and hardships of his life as strokes of luck. Or is it? What if character is like an immune system? What if it needs to be challenged to grow strong?
A few years ago, a bunch of antiseptic cleaning products started appearing in stores. They were marketed to parents as a way to protect their children from a world full of nasty germs. But it turns out these products may do more harm than good. When our kids sit in the playground eating handfuls of dirt, they're challenging and strengthening their immune systems. If we eliminate germs from their environment, we might not protect them at all. We might make them weaker.
As parents, we do everything we can to protect our children from hardship. We go to extraordinary lengths to guarantee their success and boost their self-esteem. We shield them from failure and frustration, and we shower them with praise. "You can be anything!" we tell them. We want their lives to be perfect.
Perfect, however, is sometimes the enemy of good. By promising our kids perfect lives, we set their expectations sky-high. And yet, by orchestrating perfect childhoods, we can deny them the chance to struggle, and overcome, and prove themselves. Even as we expect too much of them, we give them too little credit.
On college campuses all over the country, there's a phenomenon known as the "Freshman Freak-Out." Each September new students arrive with an absolute belief in their own specialness. Their lives have been carefully edited, like résumés, to contain nothing but triumphs and success. But suddenly, they find themselves in competition with people just like them, and their "specialness" is no longer guaranteed. For many, it's the first time they experience real challenge and significant failure, and it triggers a crisis for which they're completely unprepared.
So what's a parent to do? How do we give our kids both the joy of success and the hard lessons of failure? How do we teach them to strive for greatness, yet convince them that we love them exactly as they are? How do we give them what they need, but not more than they can handle?
I think a little moderation is in order. After all, to boost our kids' immune systems, we don't drop them off at a leper colony. We give them vaccines. Likewise, maybe there are ways to challenge their resilience and resourcefulness without exposing them to harm. No matter what path your child is on, the world provides obstacles for them to overcome. The hard part is figuring out when to clear the way for them, and when to stand back and let them break their own trail.
Here's an equation to use as a guide: HAPPINESS = REALITY – EXPECTATIONS.
Go ahead and give your kids whatever advantages you can. Put them in a position where success is possible, so the "reality" part of the equation is set high. But pay just as much attention to expectations. Teach them that some failure is inevitable, and that some obstacles are a blessing. Spend less time praising their success, and more time praising their struggle.
It's nice when our kids succeed. But success and happiness are not the same thing. Someday, they're going to look back on their lives and try to make sense of it all. Let's hope they feel lucky.
