I want to share with you a totally unsolicited letter I just received from a coach at an Ivy League university, one of many people now "on the front lines of dealing with overparented young people." It spotlights a terrible trend that affects all of us.
"Hello from the [name of university] [name of sport] office and congratulations on getting the book A Nation of Wimps out to the general public. I love the book and have been promoting it within my circle of friends.
" Working at an Ivy League institution I feel like I am almost at the proverbial front line in dealing with over-parented young people. I'm always loathe to stereotype people but I have definitely noticed declining levels of initiative, drive and resilience in the kids today as compared to ten or fifteen years ago. It's amazing and appalling to me that we have to
"spoon-feed" so many things to young adults that for all intents and purposes should be common sense. However I am forced to concede that coming from protected environments where initiative and risk-taking are not readily learned, these young people are largely blameless for being clueless!!
"I am finding (and I certainly don't think I am alone here) that the young folks I work with are wonderful, polite, compliant people who will do whatever they are asked or told. They believe they are talented and capable (because they have been incessantly told so!) but in reality they are often riddled with self-doubt and hesitancy, especially when
put in a truly competitive or "dog-eat-dog" environment. Having informally canvassed my colleagues around the country I find that this phenomenon is not isolated to elite academic institutions or the Northeast; it is everywhere.
"Competition makes people uptight because there's a chance that you might not win. The old fashioned value was to
compete in order to experience the feeling of stretching oneself to one's limits in order to enjoy the elation or satisfaction of winning. Losing was a risk that was worth taking. That still exists in today's kids to some extent but fear of failure or feeling inadequate or inferior is always lingering. The consequence is that there are more and more young people who will quit sports rather face the indignity of losing or rather, not winning, and the result is the parental salve provided by the "ninth place medal."
"I know a couple in Wisconsin whose son was so distraught at not winning a trophy in his under 10 year old soccer league that they felt the only way to quell his post-game tantrum was to stop on the way home and buy him his own trophy. To me that is beyond spoiling a kid...that is ruining him!"
