Thoughts for helping kids develop grit and resiliency during this time.

A thread...

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Life doesn’t stop when you or loved ones get sick.

My baby brother and best friend drown in our pool when I was 9 years old, and I was the one that pulled him out of the pool.

When I was 14 I lost a coach, who was like a big brother to me, and family to my family, to prison.

When I was 21, my father was diagnosed with terminal cancer, and passed away a little over a year later.

I share those things, so that you know my life and childhood we’re not easy or smooth. I also wouldn’t find out until last year that I was on the spectrum.

My childhood was rough. Not the worst by any means, but far from ideal.

Life, school, and sports all went on uninterrupted.

I don’t know what these kids are going through right now, I know some have lost loved ones, some are sick, and some will lose loved ones in the future.

Some have healthy environments of love and resources at home, some have the opposite.

We need to reach out and make sure we are supporting students.

Ask them if they need food, someone to listen, help planning, do they have access to a computer to do their work, basically do they have what they need?

But I also think they need to do their work and not just be given A’s.

Life happens.

Some of them will go on to work as pilots, surgeons, and many other professions, and life will happen then as well.

The question becomes, will those that have led them up to that point have prepared them for those moments of real life? Or will they be wholly unprepared because you felt sorry for them and lowered the bar?

They might have to do surgery after having been up all night with a sick kid and after just having gone through a divorce.

They might have to fly a plane after something similar.

Life happens.

Are we going to prepare this generation for the real world, or are we going to fuck them up by making them soft as cupcakes by trying to prepare the world for them?

Life is hard sometimes. The way you learn to handle that and be able to handle more, is by doing hard stuff.

Past generations were asked to go to war at 17-20 years old. Have we as humans evolved to be able to handle so much less? Or have we lowered the standard so much that we have become conditioned to be able to handle so much less?

We talk about “the great American spirit and resolve” but that came out of generation after generation of people that went through, not around, really hard shit.

Hard shit is a part of life.
Let’s prepare people for it by loving them well.

Empathy is important, but needs to be coupled with healthy boundaries enforced with love and respect.

Because one day, the stakes will be much higher, lives will be on the line, and whether they will be prepared for it or not, will greatly depend on whether they had leaders in their life now, that believed in them and equipped them to get through whatever life throws at them.