Every struggle is not a parenting failure

In a recent conversation with Rick Deadwyler — his friend since childhood, and the man who wrote the foreword to Open Doors — Dr. Crosse said nine words worth slowing down for.

Most parents hear the opposite all day. If your child is struggling, fix it. Call the coach. Email the teacher. Make the phone call they are dreading. And the instinct behind that is love, which is exactly why it is worth examining rather than dismissing.

What the sentence is actually saying

It is not an argument for stepping back and letting a young person sink. Read the whole of it and the distinction is precise: when we solve every problem for our children, we may prevent them from developing resilience, confidence, and self-advocacy.

There are two different situations here, and the skill is telling them apart.

A young person in danger needs you to act. A young person in difficulty needs you to coach. Confusing the second for the first is the common error, and it is expensive, because difficulty is the raw material every one of those three traits is made from.

What the research actually found

Start with what parents say they want. In Pew Research Center's survey of parenting in America, roughly nine in ten parents said it was extremely or very important to them that their children be financially independent as adults.

Now put that beside what they fear. In the same survey, four in ten parents said they were extremely or very worried their child might struggle with anxiety or depression — the single biggest worry on the list, ahead of bullying at 35%.

So we want independent adults, and we are frightened of the distress that producing one involves. That is the tension every parent is standing in.

The uncomfortable part is what happens when fear wins. A study of 297 college students published in the Journal of Child and Family Studies found that students who reported over-controlling parents also reported significantly higher levels of depression and less satisfaction with life. The researchers went further and identified the mechanism: the damage was largely explained by the perceived violation of the students' basic psychological needs for autonomy and competence.

Read that again, because it is the whole lesson. It was not the helping that hurt. It was what the helping said — that they could not do it themselves.

What to do instead

None of this means withdrawing. The American Psychological Association and Harvard's Center on the Developing Child both make the same point: resilience is built through supportive relationships, not in spite of them. Presence is the ingredient. Rescue is the error.

• Let them make the call where the cost is recoverable. A missed deadline, an awkward email, a hard conversation with a professor. These are cheap lessons at eighteen and expensive ones at thirty.
• Coach the conversation instead of having it. Rehearse it with them. Ask what they will open with. Then let them make the call.
• Name the skill out loud. "That was self-advocacy" turns an ordeal into a capability they know they own.
• Debrief afterwards, not during. What worked, what you would change. That is where the confidence is banked.

Why this belongs in a career book

Self-advocacy is not a childhood skill that expires. It is the same muscle that asks for the meeting, negotiates the offer, and says the difficult thing to a manager. Young professionals who never built it arrive in their first job unable to do the one thing nobody will do for them — speak for themselves.

That is why this sits inside a book about careers rather than a book about parenting. The mentor gap and the exposure gap describe what happens when a young person has nobody in their corner. This describes the opposite failure: somebody so far into their corner that they never learn to stand in it alone.

Support them. Guide them. But sometimes, let them make the call.

You can watch the clip in full, and the free Open Doors Blueprint covers the skills on the other side of the struggle.