I stumbled upon this video clip while scrolling through my social media feeds. It comes at a good time as I just finished reading The Comfort Crisis by Michael Easter.
Watch this clip first from Cara Morey, Head Coach of Princeton University Women’s Hockey:
Here’s the take-away: Adversity is good! Challenges should be viewed as opportunities, not threats.
Cara might be talking about building resilience in her players, but this applies to helping our kids develop that same resilience. It’s necessary for dealing with life. Not every problem they encounter needs to be “fixed”. Any time you jump in and clear the path with any issue they encounter, you well-meaning parents are just making it worse for them down the road.
It was called helicopter parenting back when we were raising kids. 25 years later, that has now becoming something worse called snowplow parenting!