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Despite enjoying Smurfs, a show about hardcore social animals, as a kid, I still hope young people believe they can fail.


Being a parent, you get a sense for what young people believe, and why. It comes from you, but also from friends at school, and of course media - books, tv, movies, games. IMHO the 'ability to fail' message is quite poor, overall, from media. Mr. Rogers being the (usual) exception. That said, failure occurs often in real life, desired goals always exceed capability, hopefully you can give them iterated games they can experience failure, adaptation, and success at their own pace. Often they will invent their own games, which we too often call "misbehavior".

But yes, entertainment obsession in kids (on-demand media plus working single parent works out quite badly for the kids), media emphasis on those who are unaccountably good at a thing, means media portrays failing far less often than is realistic, and when it does it's a Rocky style training montage. Plus no-one really wants to write the manual for kids on how to give up on your dreams.




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