Failure and Motivation

Through one of our teachers I have run across a website that I find very informative when it comes to explaining how the teenage mind works, and more important, how we as parents and teachers can better work with our kids.  The website is called Mind/Shift: How we will learn and can be found at http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/.  I have not read a lot of articles up to this point but have added it to my Favorites and drop in from time to time.  A number of the articles I have read reference the breakthrough book Mindset: The New Psychology of Success by Carol Dweck.  The fundamental tenant of her work is the difference between fixed and growth mindsets.  At NFVHS we have had some exposure to her work and while I have started and stopped a couple of times, her book is at the top of my summer reading list.  

The article that I have shared with you from Mind/Shift deals with how parents can support their children when they experience failure in school.  How we react when our daughter comes up with a low mark sends a powerful message that she internalizes.  Most important, when we react appropriately, learning takes place in a manner that the child can move forward.  Give this a read!

Talking About Failure: What Parents Can Do to Motivate Kids In School

http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2016/05/08/talking-about-failure-what-parents-can-do-to-motivate-kids-in-school/

A Legal Age to Play Football?

A few national sportswriters and pundits have started to bemoan what they allege to be the “war on football” that the media is engaged in, defending the sport for what it is and attacking those that are trying to eliminate it from the face of the American landscape.  Right now, there is significant research that supports waiting until youngsters are at least 12-years old before they are allowed to play contact football, specifically in a study  published in the medical journal Neurology by researchers at the Boston University School of Medicine.  While the justification for this argument is the physical development of the youngster, there is another argument that based on who is making it and the substance of the argument, I find quite interesting.

You may be familiar with Dr. Bennet Omalu, or have at least heard a little bit about his research.  Perhaps you are aware of him being played by Will Smith in the movie Concussion.  Omalu is a forensic pathologist and the leading expert in the growing field of concussion research, as well as the individual that initiated the study of the brains of former NFL football players.  He identified what is commonly referred to as CTE.  Chronic traumatic encephalopathy can cause “major depression, memory loss, suicidal thought and actions, and loss of intelligence as well as dementia later in life.”  According to Omalu, what makes this particularly scary is that “the brain, unlike most other organs, does not have the capacity to cure itself following all types of injuries."

In late 2015, Omalu provided an op-ed piece to the New York Times in which he proposed that there should be a legal age established for children to reach before they can play football and other high contact sports.  In essence, he proposes an age of legal consent, where the individual makes a legal decision as to whether or not they play the sport.  According to Omalu: "Our children are minors who have not reached the age of consent. It is our moral duty as a society to protect the most vulnerable of us. The human brain becomes fully developed at about 18 to 25 years old. We should at least wait for our children to grow up, be provided with the information and education on the risk of play, and let them make their own decisions. No adult, not a parent or a coach, should be allowed to make this potentially life-altering decision for a child.”  Obviously, that could have huge implications for high school football, the sport with the highest level of male participation in the country.

Switching gears a little bit, there are those devoted to the other brand of “football,” the international game we refer to as soccer, that also resent the “war” being waged on their beloved sport.  For females, the sport with the highest incidence of concussions is soccer, followed by volleyball.  Leaders in the sport of soccer in the United States have taken steps at youth levels by instituting changes in the rules.  There were attempts at the development of various kinds of headgear for protection, but those proved either cumbersome or not effective.  So, another step was taken: a ban on “heading” the ball until players reach a certain age.  Purists in this sport are saying that the specific rule change is ruining the integrity of the game, the purity of the sport.  Heading is a fundamental skill of soccer and to remove it significantly changes the game.  So, it isn’t just proponents of American football that are facing a new reality in terms of the impact concussion research is having on a sport.

The issue of concussions is a serious one, and more is being learned each day.  Are concussions among our  youth athletes a major health concern?  I have not heard that.  But it is serious enough that youth football programs, and even the N.F.L. have developed programs and changed rules to make it more safe.  But, even with those changes, Omalu stated that in our country laws have been written to prevent children from harming themselves in other ways.  For example, it is illegal for those under a certain age to smoke cigarettes or consume alcohol. They cannot enlist in the military until they are 18 because of the seriousness of that decision.  So, based on the risks, Omalu reasons why not require young men to reach the age of consent before they can make their own decision on whether or not they play football?   Obviously the implications on high school athletics would be huge, and from my perspective, I do not see this happening.  However, it is a perspective that some people are going to listen to and could likely contribute to the declining number of children playing the game of football.

Pressure In the Wrong Places

I can’t count the number of times I have made the comment “An 18-year old today is not nearly as mature as an 18-year old in the 1960’s and certainly not as mature as an 18-year old in my grandfather’s generation, commonly referred to today as The Greatest Generation.  Whenever I think about those 18-year old young men, some younger, who volunteered to go and fight in Europe or in the Pacific,  I envision those young men who made an incredibly mature decision to go and fight for freedom.  Many of those young men were already married at a young age, some of them having children and working a job.  When they set foot on foreign soil, they did so with the balance of freedom on their shoulders.  They were men that came from every walk of life and they knew full well what they were getting into, and why.  Today, I do not see adolescents and young adults faced with the same kinds of decisions or realities.

The paradox is that young people are physically maturing earlier than previous generations.  Young boys and girls today experience puberty at a far younger age that even a couple of generations ago.  That leads to a dynamic that is much different in terms of the total maturation process.  Sexually mature individuals are living for six years or more under the direct authority and supervision of their parents.  This extends the amount of time that students are dependent on their parents and delays the need for young people to make major decisions on their own.

What we have now is a population of highly educated young people leaving the nest that lack important life skills.  High school graduates today have a much higher level of education today than at any other time in our nation’s history.  They also have access to more resources than any time in history, yet college professors sometimes remark “26 is the new 18,” referencing their perceptions of how immature and unprepared people are for adult life.  In other words, adolescence has expanded into the twenties!

What has happened to cause this?  Researchers point to the notion that adults do not apply as much pressure on them as my great grandparents did during the time they were raising their kids.  More important, the pressure that is being applied is in places where it does not matter as much in terms of preparing individuals to deal with adult life.  In previous generations, parents put pressure on their kids to experience different work scenarios, prepare for family life, interact with people from different age groups, and develop a strong work ethic.  But that has apparently changed.  Today the pressure parents exert comes in different places that in the big picture do not make a big difference in preparing young people to become mature and productive adults.

So, what are the areas where parents are putting pressure on their children, and why doesn’t it help them become adults able to live independently?  Tim Elmore identifies three: grades, sports, and prestige.  Think about the amount of attention is given to each of these in your household.  Elmore states that “no one except our mom cares about your grades twenty years later,” and that their importance is overblown when it comes to scholarships and college admission.  Corporations and workplaces express that high school and college grades are not a very good reflection of job success. 

Overzealous parents are pushing their kids to excel on the playing field, hauling them all over the country to play on travel teams, and paying for private coaching.  The reality is, less than 1% are going to get college scholarships to play sports, and less than that are going to make their living playing sports.  Those kids are going to be software developers, nurses, and accountants, not point guards or shortstops.

Parents are also pushing their kids to be popular, and this pressure manifests itself in a number of different ways that in the big picture do not matter one iota.  Keeping track of and trying to accumulate as many Followers, Likes, and Views as possible is the new scoreboard for popularity.  In small schools in particular, the pressure to be popular also comes with challenges to value systems that students are still developing.  The reality is that this is fleeting, for some disappearing overnight should they take a social misstep.  For the rest, once graduation day is over, no one cares who the popular kids were.  There is no longer a need to have a pecking order.

 

When the young person moves beyond high school, it isn’t long before most of them recognize that they had been playing a game, and realize that those things they put a lot of emphasis on really do not matter.  And then, they recognize that they are not prepared for those things that are really important because the never had the pressure in those areas before.  For some, they experience emotional issues as they try to rationalize meaning with what they have accomplished up to that point.  Since they have not been prepared for the real responsibilities of life, they struggle, and many deal with those struggles by falling back into their comfort zone, which is a dependence on Mom and Dad.

If this is the case, then what should be done differently?  Again, according to Tim Elmore, the adults need to apply pressure on things that matter.  One example is to help children identify their strengths, develop them, and become very aware of their personal identity.  They need to know who they are and have confidence in what they can do.  People of character are also going to get further in life, and thus it is imperative that parents pressure their children to do the right thing, no matter the circumstances.  And finally, parents need to insist that their son or daughter develop a strong work ethic.  The need to understand that the quality of work they do is important, and that they also need to work to serve others.  These are the qualities that will lead to success in their future.

Seize The Day, Or Seize the Future?

Not too long ago, within 18 months, four NFL football players under the age of 30 voluntarily left the game.  The one that generated the most attention, and the one that is the focus of this article is Chris Borland, former linebacker for the San Francisco 49ers and Wisconsin Badgers.  At age 24 he made what all people agree was an informed decision to leave the game and occupation that was the focal point of his life.  From a personal perspective, I could not stand Chris Borland as he wrecked havoc on my beloved Nebraska Cornhuskers, contributing to some beat-downs that were hard for this Big Red fan to stomach!  But that said, I have had tremendous respect for the way this under-sized, gritty, hard-nosed guy played.  He was a “player’s player” and that kind of guy that chewed leather and spit nails!  He was what you you think of when you think football player.

The average career of NFL football players is about 3.3 years, according the the NFL Players Association.  Most leave because they are replaced by better players or due to injuries.  Borland hadn’t even reached the average.  Every player that reaches the NFL is fulfilling a dream.  The odds are .09% that a high school football player is going to reach that level.  Borland made it, and after one season, at the age of 24, he made the decision to step aside.  He didn’t leave the game because he couldn’t do it any more.  Nor was it because of an injury that he had suffered.  The reason Chris Borland made this decision is because of the potential long-term consequences of playing the game.  More specific, he left because of the consequences that so many players have suffered due to head injuries.  Chris Borland wants to live a normal life when he is in his 60’s, and he stands a better chance of doing so by stepping away from a game that he loves, and a job that he performs very well.

Borland did a significant amount of research before making this decision, even after recognizing the concussion numbers were down 25% in the previous year in professional football.  He also made this decision knowing that he was going to leave millions of dollars of salary behind.  Most players come into the league with the plan to make as much money as you possibly can for as long as you are able to play.  And if you make enough, and invest it wisely, you won’t have to learn how to do something else to survive the rest of your life.  The problem with that thinking is that most players do not get that many years to reap these crazy salaries, and a very large percentage of them do not invest wisely.  What is significant is that they have 20 to 30 productive years left in their life are left to find some other way to earn an income.  Many of them struggle a great deal with this, and if they are suffering from an accumulation of injuries, it makes it much more difficult.

Borland made a decision that is also different than most of his generational peers.  Being a member of the iY generation, short-term or instant gratification is the common decision making model.  But Borland broke the model, recognizing that choosing short-term benefits often lead to long-term consequences.  He could bank a lot of money before he turns 30, but at what risk?  Rather, he chose to pursue other parts of his life, relying on a college degree that he earned and setting out on a path that will hopefully provide him and opportunities to enjoy his kids and grandkids.  Rather than “seize the day,” he has chosen to “seize the future."

Borland is not alone in this thinking.  Rashard Mendenhall, former Pittsburg Steeler running back, stepped away from the game at the age of 26.  “There is another life apart from football, and you can be happy.  You can still work.”  Mendenhall is seizing the future as well.

Football is the example here, and it would be unfair to not note that the game at some levels is getting safer due changes made in the game and rules.  But when you look at a profession where so many workers have come out scarred for life, it serves as a perfect model to use about decision making.  In all of our lives there are those things that look too good to be true.  Make money fast!  Instant wealth!  Take a risk!  There are those among us that choose careers only because we want to bank money as quickly as possible, regardless of the risk.  But it appears that our grandparents generation, those that lived through he depression, taught us all very valuable lessons.  Good things tend to come to those who wait, and putting of immediate gratification often leads to the ability to enjoy something much greater down the road.  Kudos the Chris Borland for making a very tough decision, and here’s to a long and happy life!

Why Americans Have a Problem With Soccer

Soccer has become a passion of mine.  I get up early on Saturday and Sunday mornings to watch two or three games live from England and the Barclay’s Premier League, considered the strongest professional soccer league in the world.  I have become a fan of Everton, West Ham United, and Manchester City.  I was all in for the World Cup in 2014, and last October I stayed up watching an incredibly thrilling U.S. vs. Mexico CONCACAF game to determine what national team would be playing in the 2017 Confederations Cup in Russia.  While a bitter and disappointing loss for the U.S., it was truly an incredible game!

This has not become an overnight passion for me.  Both of my kids played youth soccer and really enjoyed it.  Given the opportunity I am certain both would have played in high school.  As a fan I got the bug watching them and started watching games on television.  But I am also a sports fan, and I love watching competition at the highest level, so I was watching the World Cup when the United States hosted back in 1994, and players like Alexi Lalas and Tab Ramos were becoming recognizable figures on the national sports scene.  And of course, I watched a number of women’s games culminating with Brandi Chastain’s winning penalty shot to defeat China in the 1999 World Cup.

In the summer of 2015, I just happened into an opportunity I did not see coming.  During a trip planned for Montreal, my wife and I attended the semi-final game of the Women’s World Cup between the United States and Germany.  It was the first international sporting event that I attended, and it was an incredible experience to watch the American women defeat the Germans.  I can’t describe the feeling of being in that stadium.  It was incredible!  And it only deepen my new-found love for the sport of futbol!

Yet it was at this World Cup game that my wife stated,  “This is why I have a problem with soccer.  The U.S. outplayed the Germans in the first half, dominating the game, and yet had not scored.  All the Germans have to do is get lucky and get a goal and they win.  It isn’t fair.”  Perhaps there is a lot of truth to this, and maybe it is a reason that it has yet to become as popular in our country as other sports.  The issue of scoring has a lot to do with it, but that isn’t much different from baseball.  So maybe it is a matter of fairness. 

Americans subscribe to the philosophy that if you work hard, you get rewarded.  Some recognize that there is a little luck involved, but more often than not, we resent those people that get rewards without paying their dues. It goes back to the Puritan work ethic that shaped a lot of the early value systems in our nation.  "Hard work has its rewards" has been professed for generations, and in the work place it has been rewarded with promotions and wage increases. Productivity is a goal and those that produce best are valued.  In the sports world we often hear athletes and coaches say “no one will outwork us,” and there are instances where that has certainly been true.  During the Iowa Hawkeye wrestling dynasty created by Dan Gable no other team of that era worked as hard, and the success of those great teams speaks to that effort.  Work ethic has been the difference maker between people of equal talent, and the equalizer for the individual that does not have as much.

Giving more merit to this argument is my experience watching that U.S. vs. Mexico game.  It was tied at the end of regulation and went to two 15 minute overtime periods.  Had it remained tied, it would have gone to penalty kicks.  However, it didn’t get to that point because the Mexicans scored the winner in overtime and prevented the U.S. from scoring the equalizing goal.  And you know what, it would have been a shame if the Americans had tied it and somehow gone on to win.  Why?  Because the Mexican team totally dominated the game from start to finish and deserved to win.  It wouldn’t have been fair!

So what about luck and opportunity?  I guarantee that had the U.S. somehow won that game, American futbol fans would have gone crazy, celebrating like wild in the Rose Bowl and in bars all over the country where fans were gathered watching the game.  But would they have deserved it, and does that matter?  Hey, a win is a win, and with a few exceptions, there are no style points!  The funny thing is that for many of us we want to know that we deserved the victory.  Fairness implies that the game is played by rules and that the best prevails.  To some real sportsmen victories are shallow when the opponent is less than 100%.  They want to measure themselves against the best in order to have a satisfying victory.  It’s kind of the same in terms of luck.  How satisfying is it to win when a referee blatantly blows a call, or when something “unfair” happens that tilts the table?  It’s not, at least to many who value hard work and the dividends that it provides.  The question that I ponder and will leave you with is does hard work matter any more, or does luck, opportunity, and possibly even deceit matter just as much or more so?  Is that the message behind the game of soccer?  Work really hard for an entire game, fight the good fight, yet lose because of a fluke when a player mistakenly deflects the ball into his own net when trying to clear the ball.  Hey, a wins a win, isn’t it?

Talent Always Trumps Character . . . Or Does It?

This comment, or one similar, is mentioned quite a bit today, especially when people are talking about professional or collegiate athletics.  Maybe high school to an extent as well.  It is a cynical statement because we as Americans like to believe that the good guy is going to win in the end.  We want to believe that good triumphs over evil and that following the rules pays dividends in the end.  Do the right thing!  Even in our history we focus on individuals who do great things and consider them to be great people — for example, Thomas Jefferson and Martin Luther King, Jr. — yet we have whitewashed or ignored character flaws, which each of those two gentlemen certainly had.  So what’s the message, and is it changing?

They say that love is blind, but it would appear that our pursuit of wealth, wins, and success has also become blind.  Recent polls of high school and college students show that a majority do not believe it is wrong to cheat.  From a University of Nebraska study a few years back, Professor Kenneth Kierwra shared that "Students generally understand what constitutes cheating, but they do it anyway.  They cheat on tests, homework assignments and when writing reports. In some cases, though, students simply don't grasp that some dishonest acts are cheating.”  Students know that cheating is wrong, yet they still do it.  So it would appear that there is great acceptance of this behavior, and when it comes to character, it is a flaw that some are willing to overlook.

What is happening is that when people overlook these flaws, or other character flaws, the results often are not what one would hope.  There is an old saying that people eventually get what they deserve, and those that bend and break rules, or continue to exhibit poor character will “get what’s coming to them.”  Yet in that quest for the gold ring, people continue to look past them.  Professional and college teams seem to consistently make bad decisions on players when the signs are right there.  Aaron Hernandez is a prime example.  Both the University of Florida and the New England Patriots were so enamored of his athletic skills that they were blinded and in the case of the Patriots, paid him millions of dollars to play football.  And we all know what happened with Hernandez, yet there is so much money in professional football that he has just become a footnote to the Patriots history, overshadowed by their recent Super Bowl victory.

It isn’t just the world of sports or business where character seems to have taken a backseat to getting what people want. How many people have stories about the sacrifices that individuals and families have made for a child to go to college.  I recently heard the story of an individual who received little financial aid to attend a small liberal arts college in Iowa and worked 40-hours a week as a restaurant manager in addition to being a full-time student.  There was a time when parents would pick up second jobs to pay college costs, and also to pay off the debt for loans.  Now, we have people encouraging college students to default on their loans rather than pay them back, contributing to a college loan crisis that has created all kinds of concern for future generations of college students.  

Wall Street scandals and corporate corruption exposed in recent years are other examples where making money has trumped good character.  It is interesting that in our country we will throw a young man in prison for five or six years for selling a couple hundred dollars worth of dope, yet white collar criminals in charge of banks and pharmaceutical companies that have stolen millions and even caused deaths seem untouchable and are able to maintain “their good name."

So the question becomes, do we currently live in an America where winning is more important that doing it the right way?  Do we live in a country where getting what you want is more important than being a good person?  Complicating matters is that we have people that are defining right and wrong in a much more black and white manner, and insisting that if others don’t agree with them, then they are definitively wrong.  Politics is awash with this today, and our country has not been as split as it is today since the Civil War in terms of many of our fundamental beliefs.  There is also tremendous hypocrisy as many politicians and “celebrities” have a public forum to discuss what they believe all the “evils” are, yet they aren’t living lives of character themselves, such as recently “exposed” Congressman Kevin McCarthy and television character Josh Duggar.  

Having good character is tough, and in this day and age everyone is watching.  People are not without their flaws, and yet that isn’t to say it is impossible to overcome them.  What we need to realize is that there is a gamble when it comes to working with people who have character flaws.  There is a risk, and people, businesses, and organizations have to measure the reward and benefit from taking a risk.  At times one has to ask whether the reward outweighs the risk today.

Investing In Our Kids

On July 14, 2014, President Obama tweeted "If we make investments early in our children, we will reduce the need to incarcerate those kids."  I immediately re-tweeted, “Truer words have never been spoken.”  I am still very much a novice tweeter, and I have been somewhat selective as to what I re-tweet as it appears some folks just re-tweet about everything they receive.  I re-tweet things I agree with, or that I think are funny or provocative.  This tweet from the POTUS is not original.  We have heard this said by many people many times before, but at this point in time I truly wonder whether or not it is a common belief.  One would think so, but when one looks around at the current state of affairs in this country, I am concerned.

It seems that investing in our children has become a political football.  In order to appease political supporters and special interest groups, elected officials have continued to cut funding to education throughout the country.  In Iowa, education spending does make up a very large part of the budget, yet legislators are getting away with breaking the law by not allocating funds when they are supposed to, and the Governor gives lip-service to supporting education, but is cherry-picking programs that he values.  There are similar — and worse — stories in other states.  As I write this, Congress is supposedly working to reauthorize the federal bill for education . . . eight years after it was to have been reauthorized.  These examples kind of paint a clear picture where children rank as a national priority.  Note: Congress did reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Schools Act in late 2015, eight years after it was due to be reauthorized.

I question whether the generation of parents raising younger kids today are truly investing in raising those kids so that they can be strong, independent contributors to a society.  Half the kids in this country don’t have two parents with them in the house where they reside, with many having absolutely no relationship with the man responsible for them being here.  There are also kids that have two parents in the house they live in, but one wonders how committed the parents are to raising the kids.  This investment is just as important, if not more so, than financial investment.  You don’t need a lot of money to teach children values and morals, or show them love and affection.  There are myriad of troubling statistics about the breakdown of the traditional American family.  The cost is a couple of generations of young people that many are very concerned about.

One aspect of our society that seems to be investing in our children is business and marketing, and I question how healthy that is.  Advertisers and manufacturers have discovered how profitable a market young people are, and thus we have children and young people who have have become quite materialistic.  This has come with a number of related issues where children have been exploited.

The health of a nation is best measure by how it treats its children.  In my opinion it is time for our nation to have a check-up because what I see is an unhealthy environment for a lot of our kids.  We need to pay attention to what President Obama tweeted and it is time for all of us to invest in our nation’s youth.  Otherwise, we will need to invest in our prison system, which is a very expensive alternative.