Tom Brady Says Modern Parents "Screw Up" Kids By Helping Them Out When Things Get Hard
"They’re told they’re great; people coddle them; they never have to push beyond their limits."
There’s a lot to joke about when it comes to being a millennial parent, but one thing that we take pretty seriously is our goal to break the generational trauma passed down to us from our parents and our parents’ parents. Do some maybe go a little overboard on the helicoptering? Sure! But we’re all just out here trying to do the very best we can.
Former NFL quarterback and dad to three, Tom Brady, thinks that modern parents take it all way too far, and our involvement in our kids’ problems leads to “screwed up” kids.
At Fortune’s Global Forum in New York, Brady stressed the importance of letting your kids fail.
“Think of today’s world, how we screw these kids up,” Brady told Fortune editor-in-chief Alyson Shontell. “Every time they mess up, we send them to an easier place to succeed.”
Brady explained that when he was in high school, he had to “grind each year” to finally get a chance to play as a starting quarterback as a senior.
Today, he said, a kid in the same position might have simply transferred to a school that would hand them a place on the starting lineup, with far less competition. Brady thinks that’s a huge mistake.
“We’ve all faced different challenges in life; we’ve all faced our own adversities,” he said. “Look at the hardest things that have ever happened. We look back at those and realize they’re the best things that could’ve happened.”
Brady said he wouldn’t have been as successful as he was if he hadn't gone through all the challenges of high school and college sports.
He said fewer and fewer kids are being encouraged to go out of their comfort zones.
“They’re told they’re great; people coddle them; they never have to push beyond their limits. Even some of the best athletes in the world never have to go outside their comfort zone,” he said.
“The blessing my parents gave: When I was that long shot as a kid who was a backup quarterback, they never said, ‘Man, don’t do that, it’ll be too hard, think about another backup plan,’” Brady said. “They said, go for it—that’s probably my parenting style.”
