The best way to make children good is to make them happy.
The author Rich Cohen loves hockey. He loves watching his kids excel at it. Like any parent, the last thing he wants is for them to struggle or, worse, to be shortchanged—whether it’s playing time or respect.
In his lovely book Pee Wees: Confessions of a Hockey Parent, Rich tells one story about a conversation he had with his son’s coach. His son wasn’t being given the time on the ice Rich thought he deserved, so he tried to make a case for it. The coach, on the other hand, had no patience. “Let me ask you this. Is Micah happy?” he said. “Yes,” Rich replied. “Is Micah having fun?” “Yes,” Rich had to admit. And that’s when the coach got him with something every parent ought to be reminded of: “Then what do you care?”
If our kids are having fun, if they’re happy, if they’re learning, if they’re building bonds with teammates, then nothing else matters. Our duty as parents is not to optimize our kids for success. It’s to teach them how to be present, how to find things they love, how to be a good person, how to respond to the situations life puts them in. That’s it.
Everything else? What do we care? —Oscar Wilde