A Plea To My Generation

Consider this a plea to my generation. Please stop spoiling your (our) children. I beg you, not because I don't want to have to keep up with all the crap you are buying them when our kid (yes, we are expecting) hits neophyte consumer age, but rather because we are going to need these creatures to uphold our society one day. Stop giving the losing team trophies because it's "fair" - because I can assure you they won't get a job when they give a bad interview. Turn off the televisions, X-boxes, and computers and open your front door. Now tell them to "Go play - dinner's at 5:30 - Love you." Do so with the confidence that you are teaching them about what's right, what's wrong, and that decisions can result in success or failure. They will figure out that you enjoy the prior but learn from the latter. Let them take a chance. Reward them when it results in well-earned accomplishment. Support them as they attempt to learn from the mistakes. Do what you feel is best to make their life fun, rewarding, and exciting – but remember that making life easy rarely results in any of these things in the long run. When you hate the thought of saying "no", remember that saying "yes" would only be lying, for their future will surely contain more "no" than "yes."

I am beyond ecstatic about the arrival of my first child. I just worry about the world we are creating for it (him/her – we don't know). I know I will make mistakes as a dad. But that's okay because my parents let me make lots of them and everything turned out just fine.