09/29/2026
So true. We do our kids no favors by letting everything be too easy.
Make sure your kid has some sandbox (maybe at school, maybe outside of school) in which they must practice to improve - and help them notice that effort leads to results.
In the early 1990s, scientists created Biosphere 2, a massive enclosed environment in the Arizona desert designed to recreate several of Earth's ecosystems.
They carefully controlled the conditions plants needed to grow.
Inside, the trees grew quickly, but something strange started happening. Some of they started falling over.
One thing that environment didn't have? The same exposure to wind.
In nature, trees are regularly pushed and pulled by wind. That mechanical stress affects how trees grow and develop. Inside Biosphere 2, researchers documented trees growing extraordinarily quickly while developing relatively slender trunks.
And I can't help thinking about our kids.
It's easy to want to take away the hard things. No one wants to watch a child struggle unnecessarily or fail when help is within reach. When we see an obstacle ahead, the instinct is often to move it out of the way.
However, what if some of those difficulties are the wind?
Gifted students can move through school for years without encountering much that truly stretches them. They may earn high grades without having to recover from failure, persist when the answer doesn't come quickly, change course when their first idea doesn't work, or keep going when they aren't immediately good at something.
Eventually, the world gets harder.
It might happen in a demanding high school class, in college, or later in a job where they aren't the person who immediately knows what to do. I don't want that to be the first time a student discovers that being capable doesn't mean everything will come easily.
That doesn't mean we deliberately make life harder for kids or leave them to struggle without support. It means recognizing that our job isn't to remove every difficulty from their path. It's to help them develop the strength to meet difficulty when it comes.
Sometimes support means shelter. Other times, it means letting them feel a little wind.
