Episode 586: Raising Resilient Kids in the Age of Smartphones and Overprotective Parenting

0:01Hi guys, it's Tony Robbins. You're listening to Habits & Hustle. Crush it! Welcome to Habits and Hustle, where we talk about the habits, strategies, and mindset shifts that actually make a difference in your health, happiness, and success. And in this episode, I'm sharing a segment from my recent conversation on the Mind Pump podcast. We're talking about what it actually takes to raise mentally strong kids, including overprotective parenting, boredom, failure, smartphones, sports, independence, and why confidence comes from giving kids the chance to struggle, problem solve, and build evidence that they can handle hard things.

0:39Before diving in, if you're listening right now and you've gotten something out of this show, do me a favor. Hit subscribe if you haven't already and leave a review on your own. I would love to hear what you think and if there's anything we can be adding to the show to even make it better for you because I read every single review. Now let's dive in.

1:07I'm not a psychologist. I'm a parent. So I think anybody who is a parent, then that makes them an expert, right? Because they're dealing with parenting day in, day out. And I really thought it was an important topic, which is I wanted to, it was called The Secret to Raising Mentally Strong Kids in a Fragile World. And the reason why I did it was I have two small kids, one's going to be 10 next week, another one's 12. You guys all have kids as well. And what I've been noticing throughout the years is over time, kids are becoming more and more fragile, more and more frail. And it's really, the onus is on the parent.

1:47And I think this whole culture of gentle parenting has really made our kids weaker. And so I wanted to have a platform or create some type of platform where we can kind of come together, unite, and create mental resilience in the younger generation. And so So to me also, if you want to be a mentally strong person, why not start when you are a child? Like these are habits and tools that are important throughout your life. So why when you're like, what, 21, 25, then you start to learn how to be mentally resilient? Start when you're a kid and get the foundation, prime your brain, prime yourself for failure, for resilience, because life's not easy.

2:40Life isn't easy. And if we coddle our children, which is what a lot of people are doing now in this time, it's actually you're doing a disservice in a real way. Gentle parenting, in my opinion, is snow plowing all difficulty away from your children and snow plowing challenges. We've created a culture of coddle culture versus challenge culture. And challenge is what makes you stronger and makes you more resilient. So let's start with that. I would also say part of this stuff is helicopter parenting, participation trophies, creating a space where there's safe spaces and triggers. All of this lingo and language, in my opinion, is creating a soft child, which then creates a soft teenager, a soft adult, which, by the way, I will tell you some of this is causing suicidal rates to increase.

3:42Anxiety is through the roof. Depression is through the roof. When you don't feel competent and capable of taking care of yourself and having any form of self-efficacy, what happens to you as a human being is beyond detrimental, right? Yeah. And we've seen it. I mean, the reason why we were all raised in a very different time where independence was very much a thing. We took risk. We were kind of like thrown into independence because our parents weren't watching our every single move. And another big one is boredom. We've eliminated boredom from our children's lives where we are overscheduling everything because we're so nervous of our kids missing out on anything.

4:35When the reality is boredom is where creativity lives. It's where kids think for themselves and figure shit out. And if we're eliminating all of these things, what is our child left to do? They're not thinking for themselves. They're not acting on their own. Their parents are getting them out of every, you know, uncomfortable, challenging situation. And we're left with like basically a blob of a human being. That's what we're left with. Because over time, we've evolved to a place where parents rather be their child's friend than being their parent. They're so scared of being disliked by their child that they're just like not parenting anymore.

5:17They're not disciplining anymore. They're so scared of that particular thing when the reality is our job as a parent isn't to be liked all the time, isn't to make our kids happy all the time. It's actually the opposite. Our job as a parent is to make our kid resilient, make them competent, make them capable. We are taking away everything from our kids. Chores are no longer even in most homes anymore. When I was a kid, there was no chance that I was not going to be forced to make my bed, put my dishes away. And when I was 12 years old, I had a job. I was working at the Olive Garden by 12. In today's time, kids aren't even babysitting anymore.

6:01They're like, there's no more babysitting. And so we are so uncomfortable as a parent or as an adult watching our kids struggle. That's it. Right? We're so uncomfortable from the struggle that we'll just do it for them. And so our kids don't know what to do when they feel frustrated. So they get super anxious. And then in that anxiety spirals versus understanding and teaching your child that, you know what? Like, this is a normal feeling. You know, it's okay to feel frustrated. It's okay to feel like I don't know how to do it, but that's part of getting from not knowing to knowing is that process in the middle, right?

6:43Like any good athlete, there's a lot of hours of practice that go in from being like bad at something to being really good. And it's us as a parent explaining and executing on that message saying, you know what, me doing your homework or doing your science project isn't going to make you better. isn't going to make you feel confident. It's not going to raise your self-esteem. It's not going to do any of those things. All it does is make me, as a parent, compete with the other parent for the gold star of the science project. And what does that do for you? Absolutely nothing. I think people growing up in the 70s, let's say 80s, there's a massive shift after having your birthday in 1993, I believe it was, or 1995.

7:29I think a couple things. I think that in 2010 actually was a big one. When smartphones became a big thing, that's the first thing. Because instead of going outside to play and ride your bike and do all sorts of adventures and climbing trees, the kids have now migrated to being inside on an iPad, playing video games alone. So the whole act of socialization just dissipated from 2010 on. And when that dissipated, anxiety, depression, suicide all skyrocketed. That's one thing. The other thing that happened was if I were to be honest with you, I think it's the woke culture. I think the woke culture has crushed mental resilience in kids.

8:18Period. Full stop. Because that's when all of this gentle parenting, the helicopter parenting, the participation trophy, safe spaces, all crept up into society where that became the new norm. And if you're somebody who is on that side of the fence, that's what you do. Do you know by the age of eight, children would have now spent a year of their lives on a smartphone? Yeah. Oh, I believe that. By the age of eight. That's one year completely eliminated from their life by just the amount of time they spent on their phone. Is the inability to know how to socialize. Yes. It has been detrimental. Do you know, another crazy stat is 26 % of Gen Z are taking their parents to an interview.

9:09I know. But by the way, this is the part that's even more embarrassing that it's actually been like considered okay. hey, nobody, there's nobody's like actually kind of like pushing back on that. But people don't want to hire people from Gen Z anymore. They're like, if they see that person coming or if it's on their resume, they just won't hire them. Or from the woke, from people who are woke because it's just too much liability with it.

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11:00The fitness element is crucial because what fitness does and what's done for me, and I'm sure it's done for you, is it taught me accountability. It taught me discipline. It taught me delayed gratification. These are core life skills that are transferable in every walk of life. And if your kid is doing that at a young age, then they're taking those with them. Anyone who's not putting their kids in team sports between the ages of, let's say, three to 10 is doing a major disservice to your kid because that's where you learn all these team buildings in life. There are winners. There are losers. There are people who are average.

11:42There are people who are better than average. And guess what? You may not have great talent, but if you work your ass off, you can move yourself from a three to a seven, right? That's where you learn these things, right? If you don't have, instead, and this is where parents really are screwing up their kids because they want to tell their kids, oh, you're amazing. You're the best. You're the best. worse than you can do. By telling your kid how great they are, worse than you can do. No, praise their work. Praise their work and their effort. Don't tell them how great they are. Or see, look, I say that to my daughter all the time.

12:17I'm like, look, you put so much effort into that. You worked so hard on that. And now look at the results of this. Versus like, you know, basically praising that effort versus just like, oh, you're so wonderful. Anything you do is great. Or that the coach doesn't like you, screw him. Let's go to another team. because that's what's happening. Parents are pulling their kids off of teams of sports because their kids are not getting enough play time. The coaches are benching them, which is happening all the time. And so basically the parents are moving them to different teams and where the coaches now are like, it becomes this whole thing where coaches are so scared and fearful of losing these players, losing the money, where now like everybody's going to have equal amount of time to play.

13:01We should create a Lord of the Flies scenario. with our kids and the survival of the fittest, right? Like I don't jump in. Like I want my kid to, I want to see how they fend for themselves without me getting involved. That's socially, that's with a lot of stuff. Like there's been a ton of situations recently with my daughter, right? Cause girls can be horrid. Okay, girls are worse than boys. Like, and it starts young, right? With like social and all these other emotional, social. You guys are socially, you guys are born more socially intelligent. That's why. You understand social complexity. So girls do the whole like.

13:40Well, girls are catty at any age. Well, they build their alliances. They build their alliances like Lord of the Flies. I'm telling you, it's very much like Lord of the Flies. And it's so easy for, especially because like you don't want to see your kid hurting. It's like horrible, right? To not jump in, right? But like the second you jump in, you're taking that game and you're like, the game is over, right? You need to see how your kid can actually fend for themselves in that environment. With girls especially, it's a dog-eat-dog world out there for these girls. Let's see how you survive or how you fend for yourself.

14:18So I like to just sit back and watch. Now, as much as it kills me because I want to like tear the head off of some of these 10-year-old girls, I swear I would if I wasn't going to be put in jail. But at the same time, like that's how they build grit. Like that's how they build toughness. That's how you really build toughness. When you really step away as a parent and say, you know what? You're doing this on your own. You're going to take care of that fight by yourself. You're going to go, if you want to go on that dance group, if you want to be on that soccer team, you know, like you got to practice or you're going to be booted out.

14:51Like put them in places where it's hard. Make them do shit that they don't want to do. put them on teams they don't want to be on and see how they fend for themselves. Yeah, but that social integration piece to what you're describing, if there's conflict amongst the peers and the groups, they have to learn how to interact with each other and resolve it themselves. And they will if you stay out of the way. They absolutely will. And this is what I've learned from my observation and meeting a bazillion people I know, and I'm sure you guys too have maybe found the same thing. the people that had the most challenges as kids were the best adults.

15:29They were the coolest. They were the most resourceful. They were the strongest. They were the most like able, like willing and abled for people who had true success in life.