It seems everyone born earlier than the mid-1980s has a complaint about today’s youth, otherwise known as the Millennial Generation. This crazy generation has unreal expectations of success, decreased loyalty to organizations; they are self-absorbed while only willing to put in the minimum amount of work to get by. Or so the media and some massive generalizations around a generation would have us believe.

Although I dislike generalizations, I have seen some cases of it up close and personal. In my opinion, the Millennials have a legitimate bone to pick. Because they weren’t born this way – this is learned behaviour.

Twenty-odd years ago, North American society decided kids needed a good dose of self-esteem. Everyone needed to be seen as special.

We started treating everyone the same, all the time. And not in any bell-curved, normalized, “Hey look, we’re all in the middle, kind of grey and average!” same. Nope. We treated everyone alike and everyone was super.

Play was encouraged; competition discouraged. Tag was ruled out as a game on the playground because there were winners and losers. Sport trophies were downplayed in favour of participation ribbons. Some schools scheduled their achievement awards so that every kid received one throughout the year, regardless of any measured performance. Everyone was super.

And in that moment, we stripped away a fundamental life lesson of the real world. Life isn’t graded on a curve.

Not one of those things built self-esteem. Little Johnny knew that he wasn’t the fastest in the race but was told everyone won. Margaret was thrilled with her reading ‘effort’ award even though she might have been a grade level behind.

Instead of encouraging the development of self-esteem, we fed something else. We fed the beast that we chose not to conquer – ego. It was easy to do and they felt super.

Ego and self-esteem are two very different things.

Kids develop self-esteem from achieving success and reaching goals, working hard at something until they can demonstrate skill and/or ability. It comes from inside, from their ‘self’ and from accomplishment. It is one of the most powerful gifts anyone can possess – the confidence to know that with time and effort, they can do something.

Don’t believe it? Look at the pride a child has the first time they ride a bike by themselves, or reads that book they’ve been eyeing for months, or finishes a puzzle without assistance.

So let’s start fixing this and make some changes.

Participation should absolutely be celebrated, side by side with achievement. We can honour great effort without forgetting to also honour victory. Kids know when they came in 3rd; it’s time the grownups acknowledged it too.

It is just fine for our kids to see that they are not always the best at everything, all the time. They are strong. They are not china figures; they will not break. They will learn and grow. And from this, they will unleash the desire to improve in areas they are passionate about.

Our job as parents is to help our kids be their best, whoever and whatever that might be. But everyone is not super at everything and that is just fine.

Because the danger, as Syndrome points out so well, is that when everyone is super, no one will be.



The ‘dad’ is rant over. For now…