The Beyoond
What constitutes a truly successful person? Is it wealth, power, or fame? Or is there something deeper that defines genuine success in life? As we ponder how to raise children who will go on to live fulfilled and impactful lives, some unconventional wisdom emerges.
The Paradoxical Path to Success
At first glance, the advice may seem counter-intuitive, even morbid. According to overwhelming statistical evidence, one of the greatest predictors of a child’s future success is the death of at least one parent before the age of sixteen. While undoubtedly traumatic, this premature loss seems to instill a drive and resilience that propels many to remarkable achievements.
If the death of a parent is not a viable or desirable option, the next best thing, statistically speaking, is family bankruptcy. The experience of growing up in privilege only to watch it dissolve into humiliation and poverty appears to sharpen the sinews of ambition like little else.
For those seeking a less personally devastating path, the most effective alternative is to constantly undermine the child’s sense of self-worth. Ignoring them entirely, being perpetually too busy to notice their existence – this parental indifference can cultivate a desperate hunger to prove oneself that often translates into significant success later in life.
The Perils of Overparenting
We like to believe that modern parenting has evolved into a more enlightened, nurturing approach. We shower our children with choices, rewards for minor accomplishments, and constant affirmation that their mere existence is an achievement worthy of celebration. However well-intentioned, this contemporary style of overparenting may inadvertently rob children of something crucial: the capacity to struggle.
By insulating our offspring from every challenge, insulating them in a cozy cocoon of sentimentality, we risk stunting the development of the very qualities that drive people to seize available opportunities and prizes. A childhood of uninterrupted comfort can breed complacency, leaving young adults emotionally ill-equipped to compete with their more restless, hardier peers.
The “Good” Bad Parent
To be a truly “good” parent, the uncomfortable truth is that we must sometimes embody the characteristics of a “bad” one – at least temporarily, and for the child’s ultimate benefit. Genuine love may require us to confront our precious offspring with calculated doses of hardship, insecurity, and emotional deprivation.
This is not to suggest tormenting children or resorting to cruelty under the guise of tough love. Rather, it is about strategically withholding the constant affirmation and emotional coddling that have become hallmarks of modern parenting. The goal is not to inflict trauma but to instill the self-motivation, fortitude, and hunger for self-actualization that often arise from childhood adversity.
The Perseverance Paradox
At the core of this paradoxical approach is the recognition that perseverance – that gritty ability to persist through challenges and setbacks – is perhaps the most valuable trait we can cultivate in our children. And as counterintuitive as it may seem, a degree of emotional hardship and lack of external validation can be the catalyst that sparks an internal drive to persist.
From an evolutionary standpoint, our ancestors who faced the harshest conditions and scarcest resources were the ones most compelled to summon exceptional perseverance merely to survive. That same innate capacity for perseverance, when not consumed by the struggle for basic survival, can be channeled into the ambition to achieve life’s higher pursuits – to create, build, explore, and push the boundaries of what is possible.
Striking the Right Balance
Clearly, there is a delicate balance to strike. Excessive coddling breeds complacency, but too much childhood deprivation or trauma can just as easily crush a child’s spirit. The objective is not to inflict severe emotional damage but to preclude an existence of perpetual comfort and ease.
By strategically allowing manageable doses of insecurity, rejection, and lack of external validation to enter a child’s life, we create the necessity for them to develop an “insecurity ary” – an internalized source of motivation and fortitude that will serve them well throughout life’s inevitable ups and downs.
Some may recoil at the notion of willfully allowing our children to experience any form of emotional hardship. But consider the alternative: raising individuals so accustomed to constant affirmation and external stroking that they are incapable of persisting through challenges without that perpetual reassurance. In an inherently difficult world, that is perhaps the cruelest predicament of all.
The Gift of Disappointment
One key component of this approach is learning to disappoint our children in manageable doses and with utter consistency. Too often, well-meaning parents subconsciously intervene to prevent even minor disappointments, sheltering children from the valuable lessons that come from having desires thwarted.
By allowing ourselves to be the primary source of disappointment in our children’s lives – denying certain requests, enforcing appropriate consequences, withholding unearned praise – we equip them to handle future disappointments from the world at large. A childhood devoid of any disappointment is not a gift but a disservice, leaving one profoundly unprepared for life’s unavoidable rejections and setbacks.
The Therapeutic Value of Boredom
Related to this is ensuring that our children occasionally experience boredom – that sluggish dissatisfaction with one’s circumstances that can be the catalyst for imagination, creativity, and a drive to change conditions one finds unsatisfying. In our eagerness to constantly stimulate and entertain young minds, we may unintentionally deprive them of boredom’s prompting toward productivity and self-motivation.
When constantly inundated with amusement and artificial engagement, boredom never has a chance to take root. Without that nudge of restlessness, there is little impetus to exercise one’s imaginative powers to devise new pursuits or reshape one’s situation. A childhood without periodic boredom is to be deprived of a crucial stimulus for ambition and self-actualization.
Fostering Independence
At its core, raising a truly successful person is about cultivating a robust, autonomous sense of self – an ability to derive motivation, ethics, and purpose from within rather than an excessive reliance on external affirmations and rewards. While seemingly paradoxical, a degree of insecurity and healthy doses of disappointment during childhood can aid in fostering this vital independence.
By allowing children to occasionally experience the ego-bruising sting of failure, deficiency, and lacking external validation, we compel them to develop their own internalized barometers of self-worth. Overparenting, by contrast, breeds individuals who remain tethered to perpetual reassurance, unable to self-generate the motivation required for substantial achievement.
The Role of Love
To be clear, this is not an argument for neglect or emotional withholding as an end unto itself. Underlying any strategic application of insecurity or disappointment must be an abundance of genuine parental love and commitment to the child’s ultimate well-being and growth.
It is that bedrock of felt love and security that allows strategic instances of insecurity and disappointment to manifest as motivational tools rather than genuine traumas or emotional injuries. The child must be able to consciously or subconsciously comprehend that these momentary deprivations are not a denial of love but rather a form of love – one aimed at cultivating the self-determination and resilience required to lead a genuinely successful life.
The Nuances of “Success”
It is worth examining what we mean by “success” in the first place. While wealth, status, or professional achievement may be common benchmarks, a more nuanced definition is required – one that accounts for fulfillment, life satisfaction, and a sense of meaning.
By that broader measure, the qualities like perseverance, inner motivation, imagination, and self-determination that can be cultivated through strategic parenting challenges may prove more valuable than any Ivy League pedigree. True “success” is about equipping a child to not just achieve professional milestones but to lead a life characterized by self-actualization, emotional resilience, and an ability to consistently transcend adversity.
The Challenge for Parents
To embrace this approach to parenting is to accept profound personal challenges. It requires overcoming the natural human urge to simply make our children as happy and comfortable as possible at all times. It means willingly subjecting our precious offspring to temporary hardships and insecurities, despite how viscerally unsettling that can feel.
It is the work of parenting stripped of the sentimentality – a mode of tough love and strategic deprivation aimed at nurturing something of immense value: a self-motivating, emotionally fortified individual with an autonomous sense of purpose. Like all profound growth, it does not come easily but through difficulty, by design.
While the pendulum of parenting wisdom has undoubtedly swung too far into the indulgent realm of overparenting, the corrective need not be draconian. What is required is striking the right balance – providing enough comfort and security to
