Total Parent Move: A Formula For Grit
What Steve Young’s father can teach us about parenting for grit and why we need to stop finding excuses for our kids.
Steve Young is a Hall of Fame quarterback who won multiple Super Bowls with the San Francisco 49ers. But his future in quarterbacking didn’t always look so bright.
As a freshman at BYU, Young was 8th on the quarterback depth chart. He wasn’t even dressing for BYU home games. About a month into the season, he called his father, a man who went by the nickname Grit, and told him he was quitting and coming home. Grit responded with a parenting line that you don’t often hear today:
You can quit, but you can’t come home. I’m not living with a quitter.
You may presume that old Grit Young was a mean, distant, uncaring SOB. But far from it. Grit was the one who fielded most of Steve’s calls throughout that shaky freshman year and after. He was his son’s idol. Grit had high standards for sure, but he poured into his four kids with patient teaching and steadfast support. He was always there to lend an ear and remind them of how much they were capable.
The Formula for Wise Parenting
In her landmark work, Grit, Angela Duckworth explains how “grit”—a combination of passion and persistence—is the true secret that underlies all great success. In chapter 10, she points to good old Grit Young as her model for how to “parent for grit.”
Grit Young’s tough, yet supportive approach embodies what Duckworth calls “wise parenting”—a combination of loving support and demanding expectations.
As Duckworth writes in her book, “. . .study after carefully-designed study has found that the children of psychologically wise parents fare better than children raised in any other kind of household.”
Wise parents build grit. And Grit Young has more to say about how you do that:
“…one of the things we’ve got to do is teach them to do hard things — especially in this day and age with all the conveniences of life. It is critical that we teach kids how to work,” Grit said.
As a corporate attorney, he could have provided all his family needed. But Grit made sure his kids knew that if they wanted something, they were going to have to work for it.
“I kept telling them I didn’t have anything and if they wanted something they had to work, and I made sure they had a job—not working for me, because that’s the easy way out, but working for somebody else,” he said.
For years, his kids had a paper route. Each worked in succession, from oldest to youngest, rain or shine. Steve said the lesson he learned was “If you really wanted to get something done, if you really want something it’s going to be some work. And don’t be afraid of that and go get it done.”
These parenting maxims are a bit of a throwback.
Do hard things.
If you want something, you have to work for it. It doesn’t matter if we have the means to get it for you.
I’m not giving you a job. That’s the easy way out.
You will get a job and then show up and do it the right way, every day, rain or shine.
As a contrast to the Grit Young’s approach…
Your Kid Won’t Melt in the Rain
It rained pretty hard over the past week in North Texas. For my wife, this means helping run the elementary school car line in the rain. On multiple occasions, she has had parents ask her if she could leave her post (thus slowing the car line for everyone) and run inside to give their kid an umbrella so they didn’t have to walk a few feet in the rain. Earlier in the year, a mother asked my wife if they could wait to bring her son out until her car was at the front of the line, because her son didn’t like to walk far.
Today is Halloween. The rain has stopped and the sun is expected to shine bright, but the high today is 58 degrees. It could be 50 when the sun goes down. So, parents are on social media asking where they can find an indoor trunk or treat to keep their children from the “cold.”
These examples are comically extreme. Most parents today see the absurdity in not letting a kid walk twenty feet in the rain or trick or treat in 50 degree weather. But, still, they’re far less likely to adopt the other practices that Young suggests. The youth development paradigm that has captured our schools and most parents is one that bends too far towards accommodation, ease, and comfort.
All the messaging tells us to make sure our kids always feel seen, understood, and accepted just as they are. This is well-intentioned and there are kernels of wisdom that help perpetuate this vision. But too often today’s parenting advice is perverted to excuse low standards, infinite second chances, and parents who are eager to solve their children’s problems for them. We’ve become experts at making excuses for children. Thus, they become convinced that they should be accommodated—that they should be understood and excused when things get hard, rather than expected to step up and find a way. The cumulative effect is utter grit-lessness.
Real Love Requires Tough Love
Real love requires standards. Anything less ensures that our children fall far short of their potential.
It isn’t kind to allow our children to grow into timid, self-centered, and fragile people. The kind thing is to make your kids admirable: to make them resilient, hard-working, persistent, and tough.
Toughness is an important value that parents should keep in mind. As I write in my book:
You will be happier if you are tough. You’ll laugh more, be more industrious, and enter challenging experiences that breed authentic connection. By contrast, being oversensitive guarantees that you will feel more afflicted by each inevitable hardship.
We have to make our sons capable of being good husbands and fathers. We have to make our daughters capable of being persistent, resilient, and thoughtful. Our kids need adversity and they need parents who believe in them enough to prod them towards their potential. That’s our job.
If interested, I discuss this failed parenting paradigm and the wise parenting model more in chapter two of my book. An excerpt from that chapter here:
Also related:
Thank you for reading and sharing!
Carry the fire!
Shane
Rainy days were my favorite in school. It made walking to school so fun. No umbrella, no jacket, romping in puddles the whole way. No only will they not melt but you're keeping them from one of the best parts of childhood. Even as an adult today, everyone should jump inore puddles!