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.

Who do you mean, "we"? You're not describing me or my family. I am "real" with my children. I don't tell them they can have anything they want. I'm not sure I know anyone who does. I do try to encourage them to work hard at school and to stick with things they have talent for even when they're not so fun. But my own experience as a lifelong underachiever has taught me a lot in terms of managing expectations and what's actually important in life.

So speak for yourself, you're not telling anyone anything they don't already know.

I work for an advice charity, dh work involves the prison service, two of the dc are autistic. So no they are not growing up thinking the world is an easy place to live in. My family is involved in politics and activism and we talk about the world, racism, prejudice, and the economy etc. They are aware of the troubles people face, the services that can support people and they know we will always support them.

We focus on their well being, education and helping them be kind and supportive of each other. They are lovely people we are incredibly proud of them, and we want them to find jobs and have healthy relationships and stay safe. I cannot predict the future but I can ensure that my children understand the world and what they can do to make it a better place and find what motivates them and fulfills them.

Well I think I understand what you're saying, but a positive mental attitude really helps things to go better. Look at successful people and see what you can take from them. Define success however you want to - financial/career success, acing life, a good old age, living with a disability of some kind. I find the ones doing well in spite of the setbacks are the ones who keep positive about things. As someone who went though a pretty awful few years, (health/financial/social/family all at once) I think it helps to remember that eventually it will pass. I hope you feel a bit more positive about things soon.

There would have to be a very compelling and specific reason as to why my child categorically could not achieve something before I would start telling them not to bother with it. E.g. if they were desperate to be a pilot but were partially blind, or if they wanted to be an astronaut but had lost a limb.

If their goals are in any way, shape or form achievable then I will encourage them to strive for that.

@TheMurk You sound exactly like me, except I grew up in the 90s/00s. Grammar school, top of the class, good at sport and art, a first class degree, always praised lots and believed I was "special". Since entering the workplace it's been downhill. I haven't "failed" as such, I have a job in the field I studied for but have found it a bit of a disappointment...it's not as exciting as I thought, I only earn a very average salary and haven't really moved up the career ladder much. No one cares about my academic achievements that I was led to believe were so important. I have a modest home and drive an old banger.
I've found contentment (somewhat) by focusing on my interests outside of work and on my family.
Let me guess, do you work in the media/PR?

You can certainly tell which people on this thread have experienced genuine difficulties and suffering in life, and which people have floated along in a nice little bubble patting themselves on the back for their random luck.

I do believe we control our own lives (to a degree at least) not happy with something, change it

Ignorance. Fine to apply to yourself so it makes your own life feel safe and good, not ok when it is used to judge and condemn people who haven't had the same luck as you.

If you had ever experienced trauma you would have learnt that actually we have very little real control over our lives, but our brain clings on to the idea of control to make a very unsafe world feel bearable and safe enough to keep interacting with it.

So it is ignorance to go around spouting off that we control our lives and people's suffering or misfortune is because they failed to do that. Nope, you've just had tremendous dumb luck and are ignorant as a result.

Keep applying it to your own life since it clearly helps you, but you are wrong to treat it as a universal truth or apply it to anybody else.

I feel like I've failed at many a thing in life however i will still teach my children that if they work hard and make good choices then they have a better chance at succeeding in all areas of life.
One thing at the minute that really annoys me is the social media culture where everyone wants to be seen and heard and that's seen as succeeding..it really isnt..

I think it's important to tell dc that as long as they have a job, a roof over their heads, they have goals and ambition and hobbies that they are succeeding.

I totally agree. For example: My neighbour is a young autistic man with a PhD. Very smart and worked hard, was told he could be anything he wanted. It’s bullshit because nobody will hire him due to his autism. He’s been turned down repeatedly because employers know they’ll spend a lot of time with whoever they hire so they’re looking for someone they get on with, and will often hire a less qualified person if they feel they’ll fit in better as a colleague. My neighbour just makes people feel awkward and doesn’t create rapport. Interviewers have said his smile is unnatural and it’s unacceptable that he won’t shake hands. His qualifications are worthless because his personality means he’ll never get hired. I’ve stopped asking the poor lad how his job search is going because he’s constantly being rejected. Hard work is not enough - if someone doesn’t like you enough to hire you then you’re screwed.

And yet some people do have rich and fulfilling careers and great lives, so it can happen and its what i hope for my kids

There are often debates on here about whether financial success is earned or due to luck, and while obviously both are nearly always a factor, I'm so perturbed by people who believe luck explains nearly everything that I've tried to make the point that what you believe is actually quite important. People who believe that luck explains everything are unlikely to end up as the lucky ones. I believe the envious or left-wing (those to whom luck seems to appeal the most as an explanation) could be bequeathing bad luck as a cultural heritage to their offspring.

The importance of how you think about the things you can't control was written about in a recent Guardian interview with a female poker player.

www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2020/jun/27/the-game-of-life-maria-konnikova-on-what-she-has-learnt-from-poker

“Focus on the process, not the luck. Did I play correctly? Everything else is just BS in our heads,” Erik tells me. “Thinking that way won’t get you anywhere. You know about the randomness of it but it doesn’t help to think about it. You want to make sure you’re not the person in the poker room saying, ‘Can you believe what happened?’ That’s the other people.” he said.

I hadn’t quite thought of it that way, but the words hit home. That was the moment I realised just how much poker might teach me about one of the single most important tools in our mental arsenal: emotional resilience. How we frame something affects not just our thinking but our emotional state. It may seem a small deal, but the words we select – the ones we filter out and the ones we eventually choose to put forward – are a mirror to our thinking.

The language we use becomes our mental habits – and our mental habits determine how we learn, how we grow, what we become. It’s not just a question of semantics: telling bad beat stories matters. Our thinking about luck has real consequences in terms of our emotional wellbeing, our decisions, and the way we implicitly view the world and our role in it. There is no such thing as objective reality. Every time we experience something, we interpret it for ourselves. How we phrase sentences can determine whether we have an internal or external locus of control, whether we are masters of our fates or peons of forces beyond us. Do we see ourselves as victims or victors? A victim: the cards went against me. Things are being done to me, things are happening around me, and I am neither to blame nor in control. A victor: I made the correct decision. Sure, the outcome didn’t go my way, but I thought correctly under pressure. And that’s the skill I can control.

*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*

It’s not utter crap though is it. The people who who work harder, go on extra training and put in the hours will most likely do better than someone who doesn’t.

Bring realistic to me means knowing the truth and working to overcome it. It means not selling a falsehood.

It means resilience and trying and aspiration but accepting that this is different for everyone. It means that not every one who works hard gets paid a good or decent or high wage but that you still work hard if you can.

It means that often a
thepeopleversuswork
hard work is not always enough and also that people would probably benefit from leaning to appreciate the positive points of simple happiness

Wealth, status and high pay needs to be separated from the notion that only those with those things work hard. Supermarket workers in this time of pandemic have been thanked and recognised but we should have been thanking them anyway. They work hard now as they did 10, 20, 50 years ago. Baristas and waitresses work very hard. Lots may have had years of study and still this was one of the few jobs they could get in their area to pay the bills. Have they failed? Of course they have not.

I can't understand the notion that realism stops aspiration. Success needs to be measured in wider terms.. Not only a narrow definition of high qualifications, high paying job, professional job etc

This is what led to the lack of trades and artisans in this countries. We need more people to aim to be a builder who does their job well, or an artisan trade or waitress. We need to pay people fairly not only we deem their job has more status. A carer in a nursing home should not be paid a quarter of an accountant.

And like Davodia example above. If your face does not fit, ie disability, sex, race, your actual looks, regional accent, voice, even how fat or thin you are, if they don't fit then you are not getting the job, no matter what qualifications and/or experience you have.

Well when I was young there was definitely no logical limitations to the question what do you want to be when you grow up, because at that age it would not really be a concept to understand. But since then I wouldn't say I was told that you can do whatever you want. What do you propose, telling children not to bother because they'll probably have a crap life anyway? That sounds like a really positive thing for them.

The people who who work harder, go on extra training and put in the hours will most likely do better than someone who doesn’t.
But not always. You can work hard and invest years of your life but still not succeed. There’s an element of luck in whether your investment pays off.

My friend went to see the careers adviser in high school, he was asked what did he want to be and he replied “a pilot”. The careers adviser replied I think you need to be a bit more realistic in your career aspirations it’s very unlikely you’ll make it as a pilot have you thought of x (mediocre job) instead. He’s an airline captain now, when he got his captains status he posted this story on fb and said that you should never try to extinguish a young person’s ambition. He could have walked away from that meeting and thought yeah she’s right I’ll never be able to do that.

I went to school with a few people who are now very successful gps/doctors, they were distinctly average at school, middle sets for maths and science. They worked hard though and one actually reset a-levels as they didn’t get the grades to get into medical school. They all qualified and do the job they always wanted to do through sheer hard work, I wouldn’t say any were very naturally gifted.

You need to encourage people and support ambition, you’ll never succeed if you go through life thinking “well I’ll never make it”. Indeed not everyone will, of course not but you should never piss on someone’s ambition or plant the seed that they will probably fail.

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.

Of course they can't. This is exactly the unhelpful attitude that the OP is referring to.

I'd love to have been a musician but have cloth ears and can't carry a tune. I could perhaps be taught to sing after a fashion and after years of training managed Grade 3 on the piano. I really really wanted to be an opera singer but it was never going to be possible.

How many young boys are desperate to be professional footballers and neglect their schoolwork for training? A tiny fraction have the luck and talent to make it.

Seriously? I can just believe the severe autism away and believe some childcare into existence to return to my own career. Funny. I actually feel very successful in the life i have because of a few bits of luck. Particularly im not suffereing with depression which is a huge blessing.
I am encouraging my children to strive but not put their self worth in achievements.

great post @flirtygirl

great post @flirtygirl

I'm definitely encouraging my children, but I'm encouraging them in a realistic way. I'm certainly not feeding them the crap that I was told at school that if you are academic and willing to work hard, you can do anything you want. Well, no, there is more to it than that. You need to find an employer who will allow you to learn things, which will equip you with the necessary skills to take the next step in your career. You can be as hardworking as it is possible to be, but there are other factors as well. You will need to have good health. You will need to have the good fortune to not be made redundant if there is a downturn. You will need to not suddenly find yourself stuck with caring responsibilities for a relative who is ill, elderly or disabled. You will need to be able to find suitable childcare if you have children. There are so many factors.

So, I suppose I will be teaching my children most of all that they will never be happy if they base their worth on their career. I spent 20 years in absolute misery, ranging from feeling down and weepy, to having suicidal thoughts, because my whole self worth was tied up in my ability to earn money. When I never 'made it' as a high earner, I thought I was such a totally worthless person that there was no point in going on. In my middle age, I have found some peace and a decent employer, and things are finally starting to go my way. I never gave up, kept plodding away until someone gave me that break. But honestly, if university leaving me, at 23 had realised that I would be in my 40s before I got that 'foot in the door' job opportunity, I don't think I would have survived.

I don't ever want my children to feel as worthless as I did, even if they don't enjoy career success (although I hope they do find career success).

And it is possible to overcome great hardship and succeed

Of course we need to help children manage their expectations; to develop a sense of contentment with the things they have; not to simply desire fame, adoration and wealth; and to see integrity and hard work as ends in themselves and not only as a means to achieving some additional marker of success. I think children who are encouraged and supported to pursue their interests, develop their talents and to develop a strong set of values and are more likely to develop resilience, experience contentment and to experience their outcomes as something over which they can and do have a reasonable degree of control.

@Brieminewine

Well if that’s your attitude then of course you’ll never achieve much. 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.

So every single mother working a minimum wage job and coming home to look after her kids isn't working hard?

Not everyone is academic and can good grades, it doesn't mean they don't work hard. They can get good grades and still not get paid well or end up disabled or sick a carer, or in one of the million underpaid yet socially necessary jobs that the country runs on.

I fucking hate how many people think all their success is nothing to do with luck

Interesting experiences about academic achievement leading to false sense of specialness. I agree of course one wants children to be educated and do well but without fail the brightest students I've ever taught have told me later that they felt continually let down as adults.

I would never push academic results at the cost of other interests because as a teacher its average, well rounded students with a wide variety of interests that seem the happiest.

It seems every single study I've read also shows that a sense of community and purpose is important. These can be nurtured as much as exam performance.

My children can aspire to achieve anything they want without a narrow definition of what success is.

They are taught to try their best and to do their best. They are taught to not compare themselves but to take joy in their work and appreciate themselves first. Others may not appreciate you but you can always appreciate yourself and the fruits of your labor whatever that may be.

They are taught to learn and not stop learning, even if there is no specific goal as there is a separate joy in learning. It doesn't have to be to get somewhere.

They are taught to keep trying but that sometimes effort is not enough. Watch the film hidden figures to know that effort, hard work and knowledge and still 60 years later, very little people know what they achieved.

But that's fine you yourself need to know what you have achieved.

It's almost cult like now to overegg the future for kids. Can't we teach them aspiration alongside healthy realism? Can't we teach ambition alongside contentment? How much youth mental illness is due to depression when they realise?