Lies We Tell Our Kids

by Tim Elmore of growingleaders.com/

My friend Greg Doss is an educator. He recently told me about Annie, a high school student who was ranked among the top five in her class.

She always wanted to know who was ranked above her and how they could possibly be taking more A.P. classes than she was. It didn’t surprise me to learn that Annie never received a grade below an “A.” If she ever did, she’d approach her teacher and get permission to re-submit the assignment. It always worked. Annie won awards and attended the Governor’s Honor Program in her state. Her GPA continued to climb. She told Greg that if she ever got a “B” on any project, she’d be devastated.

After graduation, Annie soon learned that post-secondary education is a completely different story. Upon receiving one of her first assignments back, she discovered she had failed it. Annie was shocked. Surely there must be some misunderstanding. She waited until after class to approach the instructor and negotiate. Politely, she asked if she could re-do the assignment. The professor’s reply was pointed: “This is college, not high school. There are no second chances. This is the real world.”

As she spoke to my friend, Greg, Annie was devastated. Her shock turned to grief, and then to anger. But her anger wasn’t directed at her college professor. She told Greg she was upset with the high school culture that “allowed us to keep doing an assignment until we got the grade we wanted.”

For the first time in her life, she had to adapt to the system, rather than the system adapting to her. Annie’s first year was a struggle and she did receive her first “B.”

Like many other adolescents, Annie feels lied to.

Why We Do It?

I recognize what you might be thinking. “Me? I would never lie to my children or my students or my young employees. I am an honest person.”

You think so?

Lying to our kids is rampant in our nation. It happens for a variety of reasons:

• Because we’re insecure. Telling the truth, even gently, requires a deep level of emotional security. The kid we tell the truth to may reject us or may not like us enough to confide in us. Our need to be liked cannot be allowed to eclipse our pursuit of our children’s best interests.
• Because speaking the truth takes time and work. There may be only one truth, but many possible ways to “spin” an issue. Sometimes we lie because it gets us out of a jam. We can’t handle the hassle. At times the lie just seems to make things easier.
• Because the truth can be painful. The truth can hurt and be much more painful than a charming lie, at least in the short run. To most of us, pain feels like an enemy. In the name of peace and harmony, we become “spin doctors.” We so want our kids to be happy, we sacrifice the truth in order to medicate the moment.
• Because facing the truth makes us responsible. Lies sometimes let us off the hook. They allow us to pass the blame to someone else, or avoid facing something we’d rather not acknowledge. Often we’d rather trade in long-term consequences for short-term benefits.
• Because we’ve lost sight of the truth ourselves. We Baby Boomers or Gen-Xers who are raising the next generation have our own set of misconceptions that can affect our ability to be truthful. Sometimes we tell lies because we believe them too.

The Problem with Distortion

I recognize I should probably use a euphemism for the word, “lie.” It sounds so wrong. So harsh. We could replace the word, “lie” by simply calling what we do—distorting the truth. We want to gently introduce reality to our kids, so we withhold some of the truth. Whatever we call it, we still cause long-term problems doing it. When we lie to our kids or distort things for them, disillusionment will follow the dreams that we helped them create—dreams that don’t match their gifts. Consider how it leads to wrong conclusions:

• When we say they’re smart . . . they assume school should require little effort
• When we suggest they’re “amazing” . . . they wonder why everyone doesn’t adore them and want to be around them.
• When we tell them they’re gifted . . . they get confused that people won’t pay big money for their talent.
• When we say they’re awesome at their sport . . . they don’t understand why talent scouts don’t recruit them.

We’ve actually developed a system that automatically sends mixed signals to kids as they mature. Parents drive a car with bumper stickers that say: “My Kid Is Awesome. My Child Is Super Kid of the Month. My Kid Is an Honor Student. I even saw a bumper sticker that said: “My Kid Is Better than Your Kid.” We subtly send them the message: “You’re incredible. Just be nice. Stay within the boundaries and you’ll be rewarded.” Then we place them in institutions that are industrialized, where if they simply follow the rules, keep their nose clean, make a decent grade and follow the advice of the career guidance counselor—their dreams should work out fine.

Uh, no. Not so much anymore.

Literary editor Rebecca Chapman was quoted in the New York Times: “My whole life, I had been doing everything everyone told me. I went to the right school. I got really good grades. I got all the internships. Then, I couldn’t do anything.”

What she’s saying is—she’d been handed the assumption that if you just do what the system tells you to do, it will all work out OK. That’s not necessary true; it’s certainly not guaranteed. Not in this economy. And our kids—the ones we love so much—deserve to know the truth.

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P.S. Today’s post is an excerpt from my new book 12 Huge Mistakes Parents Can Avoid.
If you’d like to know more about it, Click Here!

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6 Rules For Becoming A Better Swimming Parent

by Rick Madge of coachrickswimming.wordpress.com

The start of a season is a good time to review some of the basics. And the first one is the role of a swimming parent. I should warn you here that I’ll be repeating some points I made in a similar post almost exactly one year ago.

Before I start, I should point out that swim parents are actually pretty good when it comes to interacting with their kid’s competitors, officials and coaches, at least in comparison with other sports. In fact, swimming didn’t show up in any of the top 10 list I could find for worst sports parents. And this makes sense. Swimmers can’t hear parents during competitions, when the worst behaviors come out. And we don’t have an official that controls the course of the competition the way so many other sports do.

But just because we don’t see baseball/hockey parent type physical attacks in the stands, or hear vicious verbal abuse of officials, coaches and opposition, doesn’t mean that swimming parents aren’t a problem. Ask pretty much any coach and they’ll tell you that parents are the worst part of their job.

Here are 6 basic rules / suggestions that can help a parent become an asset to their team, and a positive force in their child’s life. The first two are directly from USA Swimming.

1) Be your child’s biggest fan, no matter what. Be positive and supportive, and help them feel better about themselves, especially after a poor swim.

Your swimmer will feel enough pressure from their coach, their peers, and especially themselves that they don’t need more pressure from their parents. In fact, swimmers perform best when they are relaxed. The perfect scenario is when they know that they can mess up in a race, and they will still be loved, supported and encouraged afterwards.

2) Don’t coach.

Coaching involves critiquing, and that implies criticism. Your job is to support your child no matter well how they do. Besides, the chances are overwhelming that the coach knows more than you about swimming. If you insist on telling your child how to swim a race, or how to swim a stroke, then your child is now guaranteed to disappoint either the coach or the parent. It’s a classic no-win situation for the child. That kind of pressure is what makes kids quit.

It really boils down to this. You’ve trusted your child to this coach, so let them coach. And if you don’t trust the coach, get your swimmer out of the program. Now.

3) Do NOT disrupt the practice.

This seems obvious, but so often disregarded. The coach is trying to pay attention to all of the swimmers in the pool. Correcting, urging, cajoling, monitoring, etc. We really don’t have the time or attention to start a conversation with a parent unless it’s an emergency. Seriously.

4) Get involved! Find a volunteer position you feel comfortable with, and help out!

Most teams are run by volunteers, and we need help to provide the complete program. Many volunteer positions require very little time, or are only required a few times a year. And many of you have expertise that can be an incredible help.

5) You are probably driving your kids to practices and meets. So please be on time. In fact, please be 10 minutes early.

Late arrivals disrupt the flow of a practice. Our team policy is that swimmers should be at the pool and ready to swim at least 10 minutes ahead of time.

Late pickups after practice is even more important. Please do not leave the swimmer alone for extended periods of time after practice, and especially if its dark out, or the facility is not crowded, or even closed. We had a huge problem last year with a few parents being up to an hour late picking up their children. This year, we’ve had to instruct our coaches to leave immediately after any post-practice chats. We are not babysitters, and we are NOT responsible for your children once they leave the pool deck.

6) Pay attention to your team’s rules on entering and scratching from meets.

If something comes up and your swimmer can longer attend, let the coach know as soon as possible IN WRITING. Personally, I know that after a long practice I won’t remember a casual comment made by a parent concerning a meet. Also be aware that meets have scratch deadlines. The team still has to pay the entry fees if the swimmer is scratched after that date. Which means the parent is paying the entry fee. There’s nothing we can do about that.

One last suggestion.

Every parent should read this incredible article by Steve Henson in The Post Game, “What Makes a Nightmare Sports Parent — And What Makes a Great One.” An informal survey of hundreds of college athletes over 3 decades was conducted by two coaches (Bruce E Brown and Rob Miller of Proactive Coaching LLC), with two brilliant conclusions coming out.

1) The worst memory of these athletes from playing sports is the ride home from games with their parents. Even the most well intentioned parents critique performance, provide suggestions as to how to do better, or even criticize their team mates or coaches. The athletes hate that.

Their advice: don’t talk about their performance unless they raise the topic.

A fascinating aspect of the survey is that kids love having their grandparents at the games. Grandparents are far more likely to just enjoy watching them participate and give them a hug later. No critiques.

2) This is the big point. The statement made by parents that made them feel the best about themselves and their sport. Just 6 words.

“I love to watch you play.”

That’s it. A completely non-judgmental statement that gives complete support and makes them feel good about themselves.

Those two coaches are brilliant. When it comes to your kids’ sports, act like a grandparent, and use those 6 words.

Lighten Up, Swim Parents!

BY MIKE GUSTAFSON//USASWIMMING.ORG

Sara reaches for the wall, exhausted, straining, and gets 3rd place. She gets out of the water and checks her time. Almost a best time. Almost a win.

Sara is happy. Or at least content. She knows what she has to fix – that second turn was a little off – and is excited to get back to practice on Monday. Sara warms down and smiles to herself. Sure, it wasn’t a best time, but she loves to race. It’s the one time of the week she doesn’t have to worry about tests, homework, that school dance next week…

“You missed your turn,” Sara’s mother says

“Yeah, I know, but I think I can get better,” says Sara.

“You almost won. You should have won,” her father chimes in. “Maybe you should work on your finishes. Do you work on your finishes in practice?”

“Yeah.”

“Maybe I’ll talk to the coach.”

End scene. 
I’m not a fan of cliché stereotypes that begin with, “There are two types of parents in the world…” but there are definitely two types of parents in the swimming world: The parent that builds, and the parent that breaks.

The above interaction – fictional, though I’m sure happens every day on every pool deck everywhere – didn’t involve screaming, red-faced swim parents with insulting comments. It wasn’t too harsh. It didn’t involve profanity or threats or tirades.

But it wasn’t supportive, either. It wasn’t, “Hey, good race!” with an offer for a hug. Instead, the interaction involved two parents, obviously trying to be supportive of their swimmer, showing up to the race, giving advice, letting their swimmer know what happened, offering critiques.

The thing is: Critiquing is not a parent’s job -- at least when it comes to swimming. Critiquing is the coach’s job.

That’s why coaches exist.

The other day, I was talking about all the emails I get from swimmers around the country and how a majority of them talk about how hard their own parents are on them. Mostly after races. I get emails from swimmers as young as 10 years old who tell me things I’m sure their parents would be horrified me finding out about. They tell me about parents who break down instead of build up. Parents who are critics and let swimmers know what they need to do to improve. Parents who yell after the race is over. Parents who threaten to force their swimmer to quit the sport if victories are in the soon-to-come horizon.

“I bet a lot of these parents, if I read back to them their letters from their swimmers, would be horrified,” I told my friend. “I bet many of these parents don’t even know how much pressure they put on their swimmers.”

No one of us wants to be that bad villain from the Disney movie. You know the kind of villain: The parent who yells at their kid and the kid goes into the bedroom and cries and music grows and we feel appropriately bad for the kid. No parent wants that to be that “villain.” And yet, I think many parents place an incredible amount of pressure on kids without even knowing it.

Many parents don’t even realize it.

Take the scenario I wrote above: It wasn’t necessarily a bad interaction. But it wasn’t good. Sara, like many young swimmers, uses the sport as a way to escape and have fun and race. Swimming, to Sara, is just a way to get away from real-world pressures, of which, at any age, are numerous. Tests, homework, social pressures, that whole “figuring out what you want to do with the rest of your life” thing… Sara, like millions of other athletes around the country, just uses sports as a secondary activity, one that is fun and healthy and vigorous and enjoyable.

Many times, though, parental expectations and pressures get in the way of that enjoyment. Let’s face it: Many kids want to impress their parents. They want good feedback. And I understand we live in a society that perhaps praises too often. There’s a joke in one of my favorite sitcoms when the student receives happy clouds and sunshine cartoon icons instead of actual grades. Too much unearned praise can, sometimes, be detrimental.

But again: There are two types of parents.

The kind that build. And the kind that break.

To borrow a line from one of my favorite movies, Stripes: Lighten up, swim parents.

This sport, while teaching many lessons to swimmers, is like climbing a mountain. You learn most lessons on your own. How to climb. How to fall. How to get back up. Swim parents: Let the rest of the world break down your child, because the world out there will gladly do so. Let it be your job to build your child up, to just say, “Great job!” and offer a hug and nothing else. Let the coaches coach. Let the swimmers swim. Let the races be raced. And while everyone needs a good push once in a while and everyone needs encouragement once in a while, this is just swimming. This is just a sport.

A friend of mine recently told me his parents finally told him towards the end of his swimming career, “We know we have been putting too much pressure on you. So now with your last season, just have fun.” And he told me just hearing that from his parents made all the difference. Just hearing those words was like a blessing -- a freeing act, like now he had permission to enjoy the sport again.

And guess what?

In his last meet, he swam lifetime bests. 

He sat and reflected. He then smiled and said, “If only they had told me that sooner.”

 originally posted on www.usaswimming.org

The Birth and Death of Entitlement in Students

By Tim Elmore of growingleaders.com

It’s not a new topic. Almost everyone I speak to agrees that American students in today’s middle class are just a tad bit spoiled. They act “entitled,” say school principals, faculty, deans and athletic coaches. In fact, the term “entitled” is the number one word employers use to describe recent graduates on the job.

Step back and reflect for a moment. If kids act entitled, it’s usually because we adults have allowed them to do so. Someone didn’t curb that attitude early on, and now as adolescents, they are in full throttle. But where did it begin?

According to research, a sense of entitlement in people tends to happen when two realities collide:

1. When a person doesn’t comprehend the big picture.

1. When a person has not experienced life’s normal hardships.

According to a report by Don Tennant, “A lot of what contributes to a sense of entitlement appears to take root very early in life—early childhood experiences in school and with parents … the mentality of ‘if something bad happens, it must not be my fault; if something good happens, it must be because of me.’”

Further, “Comprehensive studies of large swaths of different generations … [have] found higher levels of narcissism in the millennial generation.” One of the reasons we see such a high rate of entitlement among youth today is the rising levels of narcissism among them. Adults (parents, teachers, coaches, youth workers, administrators) have contributed to this mammoth sense of entitlement because we feared being the “bad cop,” providing both a big picture perspective on how most of the world lives and exposing them to real life experiences that reveal how life really works. So, let me share an old legend with you about a father who decided to fix this problem for his son. The story goes like this:

There once lived a rich businessman who had a lazy and fun-loving son. The businessman wanted his son to be hard-working and responsible, to realize the value of labor. One day, he summoned his son and said, “Today, I want you to go out and earn something. If you fail, you won’t have your meals tonight.”

The boy was callous and not used to any kind of work. This demand by his father scared him and he went crying straight to his mother. Her heart melted at the sight of tears in her son’s eyes. She grew restless. In a bid to help him, she gave him a gold coin. In the evening, when the father asked his son what he’d earned, the son promptly presented him the gold coin. The father then asked him to throw it into a well. The son did as he was told.

The father was a man of wisdom and experience and guessed that the source of the gold coin was the boy’s mother. The next day, he sent his wife to her parent’s town, then asked his son to go again and earn something with the threat of being denied the night meals if he failed. This time he went crying to his sister, who sympathized with him and gave him a rupee coin out of her own savings. When his father asked him what he had earned, the boy tossed the rupee coin at him. The father again asked him to throw it in a well. The son did it quite readily.

Again, the father’s wisdom told him that his son had not earned the rupee coin, so he then sent his daughter to her in-laws’ house.He then asked his son a third time to go out and earn something, in order to have something for dinner that night.

This time, with no one to help him out, the son was forced to go to the market in search of work. One of the shopkeepers there told him that he would pay him two rupees if he carried his trunk to his house. The rich man’s son could not refuse and was drenched in sweat by the time he finished the job. His feet were trembling and his neck was aching. There were rashes on his back. Returning home, he produced the two-rupee note to his father. This time, when the boy was asked to throw it into the well, the horrified son almost screamed. He couldn’t imagine throwing his hard-earned money away. Amid the sobbing, the boy stammered, “Father! My entire body is aching. My back has rashes, and you are asking me to throw the money into the well? I don’t think I can do it.”

At this, the father smiled. He told him that one feels this pain only when the fruits of hard labor are wasted. On the earlier two occasions, money was given to him. Therefore, he felt no pain throwing the coins into the well. The son had now realized the value of hard work. He vowed never to be lazy and to safely keep the father’s wealth. The father handed over the keys of his shop to the son.

Perhaps we need to introduce a relevant experience to our students that illustrates both big-picture perspective and real-world reality to them. I’m just sayin’…

Looking to develop leadership skills in students this school year? Check out

Habitudes: Images That Form Leadership Habits and Attitudes