To think we arent being real with our children?

[Just01]

We are constantly teach them to believe they can be what they want,have what they want,live the life they want,all it takes is work and a positive attitude!its bullshit.life is full of failure and disappointment,dissatisfaction and probably 90%of people just struggle and get by each day.if we keep telling kids oh just try hard yoi can achieve anything we are setting them up to fail,sometimes they cant get what they want no matter how hard they try or what they do.we need to be more real with our kids and tell them it's ok,that they can try and get the lives they want but it may not happen and the emphasis in life should be about being good and happy.

There's a big difference between 'work hard so you can be the best' and 'work hard so you can be the best you can be'.

The latter message is much healthier.

I have a friend who is a probation officer who works with female offenders. She says that the problem with a lot of the women she works with is that they do not realise that they can make decisions and change their lives. ie they think that they are basically passengers in their lives. It shocked me to learn that. And I think that it is probably quite widespread (not just limited to offenders).

OK, so not everyone can be an astronaut or a professional footballer, but surely though, being taught / modelled that you can aspire to better things has to be better than the other end of the spectrum.

Definite balance to be struck. When I hit problems I would think back to books when characters had to deal with setbacks and find comfort that they could get through them. Important to see that those problems are just a normal part of life.

The other issue with teaching your child what you said in post one is that if they do 'succeed' they could end up one of those people who says 'I did it, why can't everyone?' with no comprehension of
a) There will always be people in min wage jobs/unemployed etc and they deserve a decent life. It's not their 'fault'.
b) All the luck and advantages that they did have to get where they want. No one gets anywhere solely on their own efforts.

From a different point of view OP I guess I was one of those kids.

I was brought up in the 80s the era of the Joan Collins power bitch busting through the glass ceiling and breaking balls in the boardroom.

I was good at school consistently top of the class, so everyone around me from my parents to grandparents to teachers and as I got older my friends too, filled me with hot air to believe I was very clever, very able, the world was my oyster and anything was possible.

So off I went to London believing a glittering path to success awaited and that I was a “special one”.

Needless to say that belief was gradually knocked out of me over the years with every disappointment and rejection.

My career faltered along the way with poor decisions and the fact the sector I chose was hit hard with the internet, relationships were a disaster. Turned out I was no more clever or able than the next person and that outside the bubble of my family and school I was actually just another ordinary person.

That has knocked my confidence hugely, especially in my 30s.

Now in my 40s I feel a bit useless because I look back at achieving nothing in particular because my sights were set too high. If I had been built up less and less had been expected of me I could have excelled at something else I reckon.

I was similar to TheMurk.
There has to be some balance. I agree with OP that children are given false hope, and I don't think the message "you can achieved anything you want" is helpful.

What is helpful to children in my opinion:

A secure loving family
Encouraged to do your best, but not pressured to be afraid of failure
Teaching our children how to deal with failure
Providing good advice and support to help them achieve their goals

Wish I had had all that!

I'm from a middle class family in a generation that was taught all those things, then various factors low wages, high house prices, recession have made them more difficult. Most of 'us' have far less wealth at this point than our parents did.

I'm not teaching my children that they can have any material thing they want. I'm teaching them to invest in their relationships, try to find work that they enjoy and pays enough to live and to be good to people in all life's ups and downs.

Resilience, when you get knocked down just get back up, don't expect quick results although they sometimes happen, persevere, learn to target your energy where it's likely to yield good results. Also, the world does not owe you anything, and expect to never stop learning. And when joy presents itself, take time for it.

I think it's important to identify and nurture the right talents to achieve realistic goals. The 'you can be anything you want to be' message is vague and meaningless. We should also promote a stable, comfortable, ordinary life as being a legitimate goal. Yes, there are some who from talent and/or good luck will become famous, renowned, or wealthy, but young people shouldn't be brought up to imagine that anything less than that is failure.

And I had the opposite experience to @TheMurk. My parents thought doing well in school was like 'showing off', wanted me to leave school at 15 because they had, told me university was only for rich people and not for the likes of us and were more embarrassed than proud when I won an entrance scholarship and got the top first in my graduating year.

It would have been nice to not have to swim against a constant barrage of negativity, and in the full knowledge that in my life since, any minor setback will be greeted with 'Well, we always knew that wouldn't work out/you were aiming too high/you should have left school at 15 and been a hairdresser, like we wanted.'

My mother's motto is 'Expect nothing and you won't be disappointed.'

I think it’s important to keep fighting for what you want. I think it’s not just teaching that had work = success, but I do think resilience gets you far if you work hard.
I had an underprivileged upbringing, struggled a bit with grades due to responsibilities at home. Got to uni then struggled working all hours around study. There were a lot of knocks and setbacks, but I’ve got back up a lot and I have achieved a lot from where I started. I own a house, a good wage and I have a happy life. Yes there’s luck with health, but the majority I achieved through taking chances, working nights in Tesco while daytime studying, working long hours with small children etc. It was far from easy. I’ve been a carer for disabled family, been attacked etc and I think it’s reasonable to be proud of what I’ve done off my own back.
I will teach my children they can get what they want, but it’s not as easy as just following a magic formula. But they can change things if they try too.

I grew up in a. V wc family. Parents left school at 15. They firmly believed that education was the way forward, which I.agree with. However,.they also thought that university was a
Golden. Ticket to fabulous wealth
. Sadly, by the late 90s, it wasn't. I had a massive shock when people weren't queuing up.to.employ me at 21. Had they told me that education is, in.some ways, just a means to an end, I might not have had such high expectations straight away and . Thought more carefully about what I wanted to do.

I don’t know I used to think like this because of my life experiences but my dd1 always aimed for what I thought were unreachable aims and achieved them. She’s superseded me in life already at 24 and living abroad in a fantastic career.

I’m for keeping happy and aiming high.

It’s true that hard work is not always enough and also that people would probably benefit from leaning to appreciate the positive points of simple happiness.

But if you start out by telling kids they won’t ever achieve anything and there’s no point trying you are more or less guaranteeing failure.

As someone said upthread, aspiration and a sense of confidence in your ability is a big, though not the only, element of success. Kids need realism and they need to learn that wanting something isn’t always enough.

But God knows they get enough knocked out of them as they go through life anyway. Particularly the girls. Why would you teach them from the outset that there’s no point trying? You are more or less guaranteeing failure by doing this.

Teach them life is tough and unfair by all means. But if you teach them that the world is shit and there’s no point trying you will erode any nascent sense of goal-setting and self confidence. You have to have some self belief even to be in the running so why deprive them of that basic advantage?

If you have that atittude, then of course you aren't going to get very far or achieve very much. The biggest cause of failure is giving up and settling for disappointment. If everyone had an "ph well, this is my lot in life" every time they hit a hurdle or disappointment, no one would get anywhere in life.

I mean, look at that bloke who was offered a 10% share in apple when it was just starting out. He turned it down because he felt sure that it was doomed to failure. If he had taken the risk and not turned back, he would be a multi millionaire by now. Probably a billionaire actually, this story is pretty outdated.

Are 90% of people really just struggling to get by?! Maybe there’s been times in my life that I felt like that but not on a constant basis.
I do think that we should be teaching children that being happy and having a life you’re content with is the goal rather than success; naturally in life there are some people who success is happiness whereas others who are happy with doing well enough and it’s a cause of problems when we try to get everyone to think that a certain standard of life is successful.
Surely parenting is helping children deal with failure and that their best is good enough?
The thing is though that if no one tried to do what others think is impossible like become a footballer, actress, million pounds business etc then we wouldn’t have any.

OP I get what you are saying. There seems to be a diluted version of The Secret being peddled to children these days. As a PP has said, it's unfashionable to suggest that an ordinary life is worth having.

I think a better message is that resilient people who don't dwell on failure are the ones who make faster progress in life. And I also spend a LOT of time telling DC that it's fine to live modestly if the job they most love is a lower income one. They don't have to aspire to be CEOs of multinationals. But they know this, because DH and I are happy but very low income due to our vocations and our penchant for part time work and lots of free time to be with DC.

I was brought up not to try in case you fail.

I have missed a lot of opportunities as a result, admittedly in my head they would have all succeeded and that would not have been the case

But it stops you fulfilling your potential, stops you trying and stops you living.
It’s not what I want for my children.

I think it’s quite sad if little kids aren’t told they can do anything and achieve anything! Let them dream, let them aim high! Obviously as they get older it’s about managing expectations and teaching resilience. The parents need to support and guide the child’s transition to adulthood and into the real work but if you have a parent with a negative mindset and attitude they are fighting a losing battle from childhood.

I think it's important to teach children to look at the choices they have and balance it against what they want.
It's that famous quote from the cleaner to JFK: "I am helping to put a man on the moon." Every job has value and is part of something bigger.

@Rubychard

I have a friend who is a probation officer who works with female offenders. She says that the problem with a lot of the women she works with is that they do not realise that they can make decisions and change their lives. ie they think that they are basically passengers in their lives. It shocked me to learn that. And I think that it is probably quite widespread (not just limited to offenders).

OK, so not everyone can be an astronaut or a professional footballer, but surely though, being taught / modelled that you can aspire to better things has to be better than the other end of the spectrum.

I do similar work to your friend with young women. The lack of agency is astonishing, and the blossoming when they’re praised (genuinely, not yay you’re great, but specific) is just as astonishing. Having a mindset like the OP’s and worse raising children in the mindset is incredibly harmful.

a) There will always be people in min wage jobs/unemployed etc and they deserve a decent life. It's not their 'fault'.

Yes life can be very expensive now & those who aspire to particular markers of success often don't realise that those sort of lifestyles come with a much higher price tag then before.

b) All the luck and advantages that they did have to get where they want. No one gets anywhere solely on their own efforts.

I worked hard because my parents encouraged me & they did too. However no matter how hard I worked if they hadn't helped me onto the ladder when they did my life would be quite different now.

I mean, look at that bloke who was offered a 10% share in apple when it was just starting out. He turned it down because he felt sure that it was doomed to failure. If he had taken the risk and not turned back, he would be a multi millionaire by now.

Given that 70% of businesses fail within 10 years, I would say making a significant investment in a startup is bordering on a gamble rather than a risk. If you can genuinely afford to lose the money without regrets, sure, invest in a startup, but I don't think the Apple story is a good example of how to live your life.

I don't think there's anything wrong with aiming high. I do think that most people who work hard - really work hard and continue to do so even when it seems to not be working - are usually at least partly successful at getting what they want.

The trouble is that we don't really teach kids what working hard looks like. It's not like a film montage unfortunately and takes years of often boring repetitious effort. It's not about being a special person either. Often people who appear special are just very determined, thick skinned, and tbh well connected.

I wish I had known all that when I was young. I was very clever but lazy and as a consequence I am not very successful!

I don't actually teach my children that they can do and be whatever they want. I teach them about hard work, not giving up when things get easy, positive thinking and the law of attraction; whilst also being keen that they understand everyone has their own strengths and talents. The most important thing for me is that they, with our help, discover exactly what their strengths and weaknesses are as soon as possible and work with what they have. I agree with you to an extent. I also hope to teach them that there is nothing wrong with an 'ordinary' life. Life does not need to be extraordinary, no will that be possible for most people.

God, so much my parents never taught me that I've had to learn for myself.

Brieminewine
If you work hard, you get good grades, you get a career, a good wage, a better standard of living. If people are happy to just coast along never really excel or commit to anything and get any low skilled job that’s fine, but you’ve got to work hard to get the better things in life.

Utter Crap

heartsonacake
YABU. If you have an attitude like that of course you’ll never succeed.

Our children can be anything they want to be if they set their minds to it and actually put in the effort and work to get there.

The reason most people seem to think otherwise is because they can’t be bothered to put the work in and so blame X, Y and Z as the reasons for not being able to.

Utter bullshit. Not everyone will get paid a decent wage no matter how hard they work. They are not decent wage jobs for all graduates with a 2.1, let alone those with lesser degrees and the myriad of other qualifications that they work hard for. The so called low paid unskilled jobs are often very skilled but no one likes to acknowledge that. Status often has nothing to do with the level of hard work.

There is a massive difference between being realistic and having no aspiration. A massive difference between being hard working but accepting that you may never get paid more, as society does not to give your sector adequate recompense. A massive difference between working to live and living to work. A massive difference in each person on what makes them happy.

One person's level of aspiration is realistic for them, ie becoming a professor or doctor. For others their aspiration may be to be a hairdresser and have a family. For some, it's to have a family and do whatever job makes paying the bills possible, where they live. All have aspiration who are we to say that one is better than the other?

At a certain age, children need to learn that the world is not fair, it's not equal. Work hard and do your best but you still may not get to where you want to be, as that's life.

It's bullshit to tell them otherwise and stating the truth does not take anything away from their aspirations to try to get the best for their life. Realism can help, as you need to see the world as it actually is to navigate it and circumnavigate the obstacles.

I would agree with these statements in bold if the world were fair and equal and if everyone got paid a good wage for hard work. Since that is not true, those statements are bullshit.