Is encouraging your kids a bad idea?

I remember when I was young, my little brother and I took a laundry basket of things we no longer wanted to this mound of grass across from my house to sell them to cars as they drove by.  My pappou (grandpa) was one such driver.  He pulled over and looked at our items focusing on a microscope.  He asked how much we were charging for it.  I said, “You can have it for free because you’re our pappou”

My brother said, “No, you have to pay us full price”

My pappou put down the microscope pointed at my brother and said, “He’ll go far in life” then pointed at me and said, “You won’t be”

Now that both me and my younger brother are in our late 20s, it’s not looking good for my pappou’s prediction.  I have been financially independent from my parents for about five years now, living on my own in the greatest and one of the most expensive cities in the world while traveling all over the world on my own dime.  My brother, on the other hand, is a constant college drop out and is currently on year 8 since he enrolled with no graduation in sight.  He constantly borrows money from my family and his life has been a series of failures that he continually blames on anyone but himself.  I take this as proving my pappou wrong.  In fact, of the four kids my parents spawned, I am the only one that is financially independent from them.  The others may go off on tangents trying to make it on their own but they always end up getting fired or quitting early on and coming crawling back to my parents’ house or their bank accounts.  It’s possible that I will hit a rough spot in life and be forced to do the same thing but to date; I have gone the longest without any financial help from my parents whatsoever.  The interesting this is, if you talk to my parents they will extol their other three kids and glaze over my accomplishments.  This has always been true throughout my life.  At first I told myself that I was successful despite them, but now I’m beginning to wonder if their lack of faith in me growing up, and my underdog status helped me.

There was once a case in which a father named his oldest son “Winner” and his younger son “Loser” because at birth he believed he could tell which one would be successful and which one wouldn’t be.  As it turned out, Loser was extremely wealthy and prosperous while Winner led a life of drug and alcohol abuse and going in and out of prisons never amounting to anything.  The question becomes was the father wrong or did Loser have a chip on his shoulder that drove him?

I had always wanted to live in New York, a city my father despised as he grew up in New York.  For the entire first year of college, whenever he spoke to me, he’d start the conversation with “Do you hate New York yet?” I always responded, “No” and now that I’ve been here for over 10 years, I still love it.  Both my parents applaud my older brother for his genius but he has failed in every business endeavor he has ever tried.  My sister is hailed by my mother as a survivor but she, aside from finding a fiancée whose parents house she can stay at, has never been able to even split rent on an apartment and keep a job for over a year.  Yet my mother still calls her a survivor and a grinder to get what she wants, but her life is a series of failures as well.  I never get any credit from my parents.  My mom writes off my success with “Well your cousin got you the job, so you needed help.” 

The difference is that I was given an opportunity and ran with it, grinded, survived. In 2005, my sister kicked me out of my brother’s apartment while he was away.  I lived from friend’s house to friend’s house while working a job but living out of a backpack for months waiting out my sister until her failures forced her back to the Midwest where my parents lived letting me reclaim a permanent residence.  Who’s the survivor in that story?  If you ask my mother, it’s still my sister.  Everyone else in my family has made contacts, gotten opportunities but have squandered all of it.  One person gave me one shot and I ran with it.  Yet, my parents will still praise my brothers for their ingenuity and my sister for her ability to grind and survive without any basis in fact.

All four of us were raised by the same two people.  The only difference was they believed in me the least and I am the most successful by any objective standards.  Loser was always the child that was neglected and ignored but he rose above it to become much more successful than his brother.  Psychologists say that these golden children are pushed too hard by their parents and that’s what causes their collapse.  Maybe, but my theory is, they feel entitled to things therefore are not willing to work for it.  Since they don’t work for it, they fail miserably.  So when it comes to raising your children, perhaps downplaying their accomplishments and teaching them to only blame themselves for their failures may be the best way to help them succeed.  My father was extremely successful and his father told him from an early age that he would be pissed at him if he took over the family business (diner).  He said to him “I flip burgers so you don’t have to” From an early age my father was taught that his father wouldn’t accept him crawling back to him after college.  I personally refused to crawl back to my parents’ house in the Midwest because I hated living in the Midwest and I love NewYork.  Once the safety net was taken away, success seems like the only option….and that’s what me and my father did.  Though, I’ve gone this long without praise, so I don’t think I deserve any. After all, it appears praise is what gets people into trouble!