One of the biggest culture shifts I’ve watched over the past 35 years isn’t in athletes.
It isn’t in students.
It isn’t even in talent.
It’s in how adults respond when kids experience disappointment.
Somewhere along the way, many of us stopped preparing kids for discomfort and started protecting them from it.
The intentions are good.
The results aren’t always.
Before anyone tightens up reading this, let me be clear: most parents are good people trying to do right by their kids. This isn’t a parent-bashing article.
It’s a culture-observation article.
Good intentions don’t automatically produce strong outcomes. Sometimes the most loving instincts accidentally build the weakest systems.
You can love a child deeply and still prepare them for a world that doesn’t exist.
And nowhere is that more visible than in how adults respond when kids lose.
Donuts After a Loss
Several years ago, one of our local schools suffered a rivalry loss.
The kind of loss that lingers.
The bus ride home was quiet.
Nobody wanted to talk.
Players stared out the windows replaying missed shots, turnovers, and defensive mistakes. Athletes have been doing that for generations. They replay the game in their heads and try to figure out where things went wrong.
Loss hurts.
It’s supposed to.
That’s part of the lesson.
The next day at practice, parents showed up with donuts and milk for the team.
Donuts.
After an upset loss.
I understand the instinct.
It comes from love.
It comes from empathy.
It comes from wanting kids to know they’re still valued even when they fail.
But culture asks a harder question than instinct does.
What lesson just got reinforced?
The sequence matters more than the intention.
You played poorly.
You lost focus.
You underperformed.
The response was sugar and sympathy.
That’s not preparation.
That’s emotional cushioning.
When I was growing up, losing a rivalry game usually resulted in extra running. Apparently somewhere along the way we replaced wind sprints with glazed pastries.
And cushioning repeated often enough becomes expectation.
Loss is supposed to sting a little.
That sting contains information.
It tells you where the work lives.
It tells you what needs attention.
It tells you what has to improve.
When we rush to erase the discomfort, we often erase the lesson hidden inside it.
The Bosnian Custodian
Later that day, our night custodian found me.
He was originally from Bosnia. A hard-working guy built like he could carry the entire building out by himself if he needed to.
He had heard about the donuts.
He shook his head.
“Coach Harr,” he said. “You lose to those guys, we run next day.”
Then he pointed toward the gym.
“These guys get donuts.”
That was it.
No lecture.
No psychology.
No parenting book.
Just a simple observation.
He wasn’t angry at the players.
He wasn’t angry at the parents.
He was reacting to the lesson.
He came from a culture where disappointment led to effort. Where setbacks created motivation. Where loss triggered work, not rewards.
Sometimes it takes an outsider to show you how far a system has drifted.
Comfort Isn’t the Problem
Comfort isn’t wrong.
Encouragement isn’t wrong.
Support isn’t wrong.
Timing is everything.
Comfort before accountability weakens standards.
Comfort after accountability strengthens resilience.
When emotional relief arrives before ownership, the growth lesson gets skipped. The brain never connects effort to outcome.
But when accountability comes first — when the team owns the loss, fixes the mistakes, and does the work — encouragement lands differently.
It reinforces strength instead of replacing it.
The strongest cultures don’t deny emotion.
They organize it.
Protection vs. Preparation
Modern parenting has slowly tilted from preparation toward protection.
Not because parents are lazy.
Not because parents don’t care.
Quite the opposite.
It comes from love.
No parent wakes up hoping to raise a fragile adult.
But protection and preparation are not the same thing.
Protection removes obstacles.
Preparation builds capability.
Protection says: “I’ll clear the path.”
Preparation says: “I’ll walk the path with you.”
Life rarely clears the path. Difficulty shows up without warning.
Resilience is built by meeting it, not by editing it out.
Résumé Parenting
There’s another version of this that shows up everywhere now.
I call it résumé parenting.
Every camp.
Every travel team.
Every lesson.
Every credential.
Every activity gets stacked carefully to create the perfect future profile.
Some kids have résumés that look like they’re applying to run a Fortune 500 company before they’ve learned how to load a dishwasher.
Somewhere along the way, achievement became easier to measure than responsibility, so many adults started chasing the wrong scoreboard.
But leadership doesn’t grow from stacked experiences.
It grows from repeated responsibility.
You can build a perfect résumé and still collapse under pressure.
You can build strong habits and succeed almost anywhere.
Culture responds to habits, not bullet points.
Translating Discomfort
Kids don’t need adults who remove every hard feeling.
They need adults who help them interpret hard feelings correctly.
- Loss becomes learning.
- Mistakes become adjustment.
- Failure becomes effort.
- Setbacks become preparation.
That translation is leadership.
When adults skip the translation and jump straight to emotional relief, the growth moment disappears.
The child feels better in the short term.
But learns less in the long term.
And culture is built from learning, not soothing.
Three Dangerous Lessons
Over-protection quietly teaches three lessons:
- Discomfort is unfair.
- Struggle is abnormal.
- Consequence is negotiable.
None of those survive adulthood.
That’s why many over-protected kids become shocked young adults. Reality doesn’t match the training environment.
Culture builders prepare kids for reality.
They don’t throw them into it alone.
But they don’t shield them indefinitely either.
They walk beside them through difficulty instead of dragging difficulty out of the way.
That difference determines resilience.
When No One Is Watching
Eventually the donuts stop.
The safety nets disappear.
Parents aren’t there.
Teachers aren’t there.
Coaches aren’t there.
Bosses aren’t there.
Life simply asks:
What habits did you build when things didn’t go your way?
That’s why resilience matters.
Because sooner or later every child encounters a challenge that cannot be solved by comfort.
And when that day comes, preparation will always outperform protection.
Every time.
Next week: why some parents accidentally become their child’s personal lawyer — and what that does to accountability, leadership, and long-term resilience.
This story first appeared on Matt’s Substack. Read the original post — “When Comfort Replaces Preparation” — and subscribe to the newsletter for stories and lessons from more than 35 years in coaching, education, and leadership every week.
