Leadership’s Future: Don’t Cripple Your Kids’ Future

Are kids learning anything from the economic meltdown?

Parents seem to be doing everything possible to avoid exposing their little darlings to a dose of reality.

Quotes in a December post highlighted parental efforts to fill Christmas wish lists and shelter their kids from the tanking economy.

A letter to Malcolm Berko asking for financial advice is another example of the lengths to which parents are willing to go, here is the key part.

“…Our son will graduate high school this May and we don’t have the savings to send him to the University of Florida, his chosen school where his two best buddies attend. Our combined 401(k) savings plans are worth $67,000 and they too took a big hit in the market. So we are thinking either of taking a mortgage on our home (we built it without borrowing money), cosigning a note at the credit union or cashing in our 401(k) plans for his college money. Or I could take a part-time consulting job…”

Berko doesn’t suffer fools gladly and has no compunction about saying what he thinks (I highly recommend his column). I’ve shortened his response, but it’s worth reading the whole thing.

“I’d be more concerned about adding money to your retirement savings plan than helping your son pay for frat parties, beer, sex and drugs at the University of Florida…I suspect he really wants to party with his buddies, and UF is a great party school.

Here’s my advice: Tell your son to join the armed services where he’ll mature in a hurry…Or your kid can live at home, attend a community college…and take a part-time job at McDonald’s. If he does well in community college, he can easily find the financial support to earn a bachelor’s or a master’s degree.”

One reason the Great Depression made a great impression was that kids weren’t sheltered from its effects. And although this isn’t a depression the principle is the same.

Saddest of all, preventing kids from experiencing and dealing with reality now cripples them in the future. They have a

• harder time in college;
• more difficulties when they start working and
• more problems in relationships and marriage.

Succeeding in life requires knowing what to do and how to deal with things when they don’t go your way and are outside of your control.

But as long as parents keep shielding kids from the ups and downs of reality and are available to intervene and make [whatever] better then there’s no reason for kids to learn how to do it themselves, which will be a big disadvantage for them in the future.

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Image credit: flickr