Thank you for downloading the Focus on the Family Parenting Podcast. You can find more helpful advice at

Focus on the Family.com slash parenting podcast.

Well maybe you remember that movie, Remember the Titans about a high school football team during the 1970s and that era of racial integration.

The soft assistant coach confronts Coach for being too tough on his players and

Coach Boone says well you're not doing these kids a favor by coddling them you're crippling

them for life and maybe that's your motto as a parent. I'm John Fuller along with Danny

Werta who leads our parenting and youth department here at Focus on the

family and Danny if my kids are unmotivated in school or sports or something, maybe it's an opportunity for

me to be a little different in my coaching for them?

What do you think?

Well, kids do need to have some opportunities to fail opportunities to grow and many times that

requires a parent to step back and allow those things to happen.

But also it it requires helping your kids understand

that they can do certain things.

If not, they will develop what's called learn helplessness,

which means that a child doesn't think they have what it takes to do what is required in that moment and

there are two different sides to learn helplessness it could be that you feel like you fail all the time and you're just never going to be able to do it well.

Yeah, kind of fatalistic.

Fatalistic.

And it's, it feels like you don't have control over your life.

And sometimes when you do everything for your kids, they feel they can't do it on their own.

Well, this is an important concept, and it's a fine line.

...