All My Life I’ve Been Told I Was Special. It Was A Lie.

<i>I grew up in a house where abundant praise was given for completion of the most mundane of tasks. Failures were justified and assigned an appropriate cause that absolved me of any wrongdoing.</i><p>Exactly the opposite of my experience. My father never praised us. Ever. My mother rarely did. We were routinely punished for anything less than perfection: homework, grades, even washing the dishes (Do them again! Not clean enough!)<p>And yet they must have been doing something else so subtly that none of us ever noticed. Everything about the way they treated us led each of us to believe that we could accomplish anything, as long as we worked hard enough and didn't expect anything given to us. We were special but not entitled.<p>I sometimes felt angry about how we were treated until one day I realized that they made a great parental sacrifice, exchanging their own popularity for our potential.<p>There both gone now and I think about them every day. Even more so after posts like this one. Thank you, OP.

The author of the piece still doesn't get it. He blames other people for his belief that nothing is his fault, oblivious to the irony of that logic. His twitter bio starts with the words "Trying to figure myself out". He looks inside himself and sees nothing; His reaction to that void is to just keep looking.<p>He wants more than anything in the world to be a game journalist, or a story writer, or an animator, or a game designer, or whatever, which is fine if you're a freshman, but seriously fucked up if you're several years out of college. He hasn't realised that you don't need anyone's permission to write games reviews or make short films or put together a little indie game, you just fucking do it. He is sufficiently preoccupied with the question of identity that he fails to understand that "doing x" precedes "being x".<p>He uses the world "passion" more than anyone who understands the meaning of that word. Put bluntly, he's a pathological narcissist. I feel desperately sorry for the guy, but not as much as I feel sorry for the people who live with him.

I used to think, like the author, that the "everyone gets a trophy" epidemic in America was a major problem. Lately, I've come to realize that this is but half of the problem. The other half is America's growing culture of Celebrity Worship. You see it all over: in the way America's youth treats Facebook and Twitter, in the exponential growth of "reality" shows and "talent" competitions, in the rise of celebrities who are "famous for being famous".<p>With the way that America treats celebrity, not just as something to be desired but something to be <i>expected</i>, it's hard to blame parents for having that "everyone gets a trophy" mentality. The reality is that someone needs to sweep the floors. Someone needs to build the buildings, dig the ditches, and work the assembly line. The fact that America seems to have forgotten how to do those jobs and still maintain a sense of accomplishment, a sense of self-worth, is directly reflected by the employment crisis the country currently finds itself in. When everyone is trying to be a celebrity, you end up with a country full of celebrities and drop-outs, of highly-paid, highly-skilled workers, and McDonalds' cashiers.

I used to struggle with the same thing. Always being told that I was special. Graduating at the top 2% of my high school, slated for MIT, "you'll go far kid."<p>But here I am, feeling normal and useless. I lead a moderate sized club at RPI, but I don't even feel accomplished for it. I haven't seen any of the job offers that I felt were promised to me when I enrolled at the school, I haven't gotten any major internships.<p>As a kid I used to hit the video games pretty hard, but at some point I started to realize how fake the achievements felt. I literally can't stomach playing video games anymore. It feels like taking some sort of numbing drug. I have good memories, and I don't even regret most of the weekends I devoted entirely to video games (and the costs associated).<p>But I feel ill equipped for criticism. Not only am I ill equipped to hear criticism, but my peers are ill equipped to give criticism. Did my speech go well? What could I improve? Even when I can tell that my peers did not like what they saw, it's hard to figure out why, I don't think that some of them even know how to criticize someone within their own mind.<p>I worked a job last summer teaching kids. I still visit from time to time, and the trend of positive reinforcement and lack of criticism seems to be gaining momentum in our youth. My boss would not let me criticize my own students. And this worries me. What happens when everybody hits the real world, ill equipped for the failure that most adults will tell you happens regularly?<p>And what can we do to address the issue without swinging the pendulum in the exact opposite direction, to the fabled 'tiger' parenting that seems to carry it's own hefty share of negative consequences?

Relatedly, praise hard work, not intelligence.<p><a href="http://www.parentingscience.com/praise-and-intelligence.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.parentingscience.com/praise-and-intelligence.html</a><p><a href="https://www.stanford.edu/dept/psychology/cgi-bin/drupalm/system/files/Intelligence%20Praise%20Can%20Undermine%20Motivation%20and%20Performance.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://www.stanford.edu/dept/psychology/cgi-bin/drupalm/sys...</a>

I think this is another case of "Failures were justified and assigned an appropriate cause". In reality, the author didn't have the discipline to balance work and entertainment. This sounds like tantamount lazyness to me; who doesn't want to be having "fun" all the time instead of work or school?<p>I have difficulty putting it into words but this sounds like one big excuse blaming society/parents/school for his failures rather than <i>himself</i>, which is where they lie.

I believe this culture arose in 90's as a reaction to the 70's where in the US, the education system mainstreamed almost everyone and praise was nonexistent.<p>Today's 40-50 y/o so-called rocket scientist sat through exactly the same coursework, at the same pace, as the lowest passable student. Some schools even placed everyone in the same large room regardless of age.<p>To make things worse, grading was heavily weighted on rote assignments being completed; boredom could turn a 99th percentile tester into a C student and nothing was done.<p>Somehow though college admission was surprisingly objective. You could get into a respected public engineering school with any GPA if your SAT score was high enough.<p>The opposite is true now, where GPA is who you are "intellectually," and "honors" courses that allow you to get a 5.0 on a 4.0 scale almost ensure that the valedictorian will have more than a 4.0/4.0 GPA. Compliant, hard workers can grow up thinking they're also PhD material.<p>There is some validation in real life for the old system however. "Success" in real life is mostly just showing up consistently and having social skills to keep your customers (or bosses) happy.<p>Like ideas, raw intellectual horsepower doesn't go far without execution.

We lived in the US for a couple years when I was in grade school. My parents always laughed and mocked the stickers that my teacher would put on our assignments: "Great Job!", "You're the best!", "#1". (almost 20 years later, it is still a recurring joke in my family).<p>An English professor of mine in college loved to dissect differences between the French and English language, and how they highlighted the differences in how anglo-saxon cultures and French culture approach education.<p>French schools mark out of 20 (0 being worst, 20 being best); but no one ever gets 20. In middle and high school, getting 17 or 18 is already stupendous; in college, top students rarely ever go above 15, and some professors skew their grading to rarely give out marks above 10 in order to toughen up students. On the other hand, getting an A or a 100% in a US college class is not all that hard. In French, we also often use the verb "to perfect" ("se parfaire") to mean "improve"; for instance, "I'm taking classes to perfect my English". I don't believe I've ever encountered that construction in English (if it is grammatically correct, then it is infinitely rarer)<p>My professor's main point being that in French culture, perfection is something we strive towards, but never achieve; whereas in anglo-saxon culture, it is something fully within reach.<p>I was never a straight A student; in middle and high school, my grades would rarely go above 14/20; in college, they were more around 12/20. I did finish my undergrad in a British institution, where my marks immediately skyrocketed and I graduated with the highest honors (ha). In grad school (US), I got a B or two, but they always were from some tough foreign professors.<p>By contrast, I dated an American girl for a while who had always been a straight A student in middle/high school (graduated valedictorian) and college (graduated on the dean's roll etc. etc.). Her blaring success stopped right as she graduated college though; she quickly fell in deep depression at that point due to the stark contrast with what she experienced and the professional world.<p><i>Addendum</i>: Differences between the French (and European to some extent) and American culture have fascinated me for the past few years, as I grew up in a pluricultural environment in the later years, but very French in my early years (and as I slowly become a functioning adult, understanding what shaped my youth and education is interesting to me). To anyone interested in that question, I recommend the book "Bringing Up Bébé" by Pamela Druckerman, which is about a British/American couple discovering French parenting and contrasting it with their own. It is pop-cultury and light on actual research, but does contain interesting insights. Any recommendations on that same topic are very welcome :)

That's because "education" as we know it is bullshit.<p>Instead of finding a talent and teaching you to do something useful it teaches you to do nothing useful for ten years.<p>More so, it benchmarks your ability to do nothing useful and (in some systems) tries to decide whether to let you to finally learn to do something useful or not.<p>I suggest sidestep this and go straight into programming (writing, drawing, whatevering). Call this Minimal Viable Education.

One of a key tenants of the parenting style my wife and I use (positive discipline) is that you encourage and do not praise. The difference is subtle, but it focuses on the action and not the person. For example, when one of our kids do well in school, we don't say "you're so smart!". Rather, we say "you worked hard for that, good job! keep it up!". When a child fails, we say "I understand you feel bad. What do you think you could have done better?"

The problem with many Americans, and wealthy people more generally, is that they're spoiled rotten to the extent that they are brainwashed into believing that how much monopoly money they take home and how much respect a bunch of other spoiled rotten people give them indicate success or failure in life.<p>Meanwhile people are starving and dying in wars all over the world. There's no such thing as success or failure in a wealthy country. It's all meaningless. There are just a bunch of people who are well taken care of and given an addictive, stressful game to play so they don't rock the boat.

&#62; Except in video games. In video games greatness is inevitable.<p>The underlying assumption here is incorrect, that is, that greatness involves saving the world in some epic way. I, however, see greatness in one who sacrifices himself for another, no matter how small the task. From the stay-at-home mom who spends most of her time caring for a small child to Captain Kirk's father who sacrificed himself for the whole ship (newest ST movie), there is greatness to be found in all of them, and one is not necessarily greater than the other, for they both involve elevating the other's interests above your own.

A good, fee-paying, school for girls in the UK runs "failure week" to let girls know that risk is good; failure will happen; and that you need to be able to work through it.<p>(<a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-16879336" rel="nofollow">http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-16879336</a>)<p>Praise effort and work, not just good outcomes, is something that has been mentioned on HN a few times before. What I think would be good (although I welcome correction from anyone with better knowledge of education) is letting bright students help teach slower students. This isn't just for the less able students. Teaching other people strengthens your own skills. You don't have bright bored students causing trouble. You have a teacher more able to help students that need it. Maybe it already happens? I dunno. I went to a school that had pretty heavy streaming.

This is how America ruins it's best children. I know the story so well, I only had to read the title, though I did skim the article to be sure.<p>Children need to be given goals and challenged, not constantly told they are good enough. Children need to be shown a path to improvement, not reassurance on their accomplishments.<p>There's a reason Americans fascinated by movies about hard loving teachers who are proud but never satisfied with their students, like in the Karate Kid or Dead Poets' Society (dating myself there.) Unfortunately we can't bring ourselves to actually challenge our children and sacrifice their short term glee for long term fulfillment.

While in jr. high and high school I helped my father with his business. I saw all the same 'U R SPESHUL' crap dumped on kids and laughed it off. In the working world you have to 'pass' or you may not have cash for dinner. Failures are very common in the real world. You may not make the big sale you were expecting. The company you work for may go out of business. All kinds of things go wrong, raising your children to be resilient is more important then shooting for success. This also means you have to allow your kids to suffer the consequences of their failures too. You don't want them to get hurt, but if you save them from themselves every time, you've taught them that mommy/daddy will bail them out whenever they need it.

I look at most games as the evil.<p>They provide the illusion of power or change in your life, but nothing really change outside of your game. Nothing improve other than your stats.<p>So instead of just playing game, I also make them. With making video games, I learn all sort of thing applicable to programming and real life. The game I am working on will enlighten players with a simulation of infantry combat. (suppressive fire, maneuvering, covers, spacing, etc)

Cant agree more! I have always hated video games but this game called Braid caught my attention. Being highly addicted to this puzzler, i finished it in a week and i remember what i felt. I felt like a genius, like i did which no one could, but my brother, he finished before me. Video games can make you feel like someone but as soon as you get beaten in your game, the dirty old feeling will be back.

&#62;I want to become the adult I believed I could be. I want video games to become something that helps me change instead of giving me a place to hide<p>This is a growing and misguided sentiment. Being absorbed in and obsessed with video games is the problem, not the content of the games! If you want to grow up you need to collide with the real world. No game is going to become the driver of adulthood. The answer here is to subtract games from your life and go live in the world. Unfortunately there is an "art game" movement indulging in delusions that the right kind of game can rise above the level of crass entertainment and "nourish" the player. This is garbage. You can imbibe the most clever and interest art in the world, but only living in the real world can teach you about the real world. Even education is dangerously "gamified". The difference there is that the world is rigged with many favors for educated people, so you don't have much choice.

I posted this as a reply to the article itself, but I feel I should post it here as well, in case it just gets buried there.<p>To me, the OP's post is clearly a cry for help, guidance, a "wtf do I do next?"<p>Been there.. You know what you need to do? Treat life itself like a video game. Win. Stop what you're doing right now. Think really hard about what winning would be for YOU. Write that down on a piece of paper. Done? Good.. now figure out how to get there.<p>I, too, had a great affection, possibly obsession, with video games at a similar point in my life. I had these grand ideas for video games that I'd like to play, but didn't exist yet. So, I started figuring out what it would take to make them. Now, roughly 6 years later, I'm not in game development, but I am building complex web applications and doing a lot of very interesting things. And, you know what? I'm happy.<p>You have the drive. Make happiness happen. Don't wait for it to come to you.

OK, I love the tide of unbridled machismo -- here's a little secret: No one is special, but one of the precious gifts we get from our parents or guardians is unconditional love. And given the harsh reality of our situation: that we live in a world which is indifferent to our survival, that it will only briefly remember any of our accomplishments, that we are more likely to go on forever struggling with our own mediocrity, we are deserving of that love and it is invaluable. It is something that (as far as we know), our species creates that is unique. And if it chokes us a little bit and if it stunts our growth, then that is acceptable bargain for the brief memories of peace and happiness that it will create for us, which we can carry with us on our long journey to the grave.

I believe the problem is in the way we make "special", or "intelligent", or any one of countless others, an actual part of a person's identity. I'd like to get away from describing the individual and instead concentrate on their specific achievements. It may not make us feel very good about ourselves, but it's a great deal more precise, and it focuses on reality rather than cherry-picked descriptors to encapsulate a "character".<p>Every time I read an 'about' section of a personal site and see something along the lines of "I'm a blogger, a technology geek, a cyclist, a photographer, and a serial dabbler" I wrinkle my nose a little because it seems like they're writing the person they want to be, rather than focusing on what they have to show for it.

Oh boohoo. I'm sorry he lost his Mum, but I think he needs to read this:<p><a href="http://www.cracked.com/blog/6-harsh-truths-that-will-make-you-better-person/" rel="nofollow">http://www.cracked.com/blog/6-harsh-truths-that-will-make-yo...</a><p>EG: #3. You Hate Yourself Because You Don't Do Anything #2. What You Are Inside Only Matters Because of What It Makes You Do

Where I grew up, no accomplishment was good enough. It took a while before the amnesia of age set in, and I began to forget the pervasive pointlessness of effort that I was supposed to have absorbed. But one lesson coming out of this experience I did not forget. I was determined never to start a family. I succeeded.

Take home story? For me it's don't tell people (children) they're special when they're not. Love and cherish sure, praise hard work (as mentioned here) definitely, but random "you're great!!" nope. Oh, and maybe work harder and don't play computer games ;)

We live in a honorless world.<p>There can be no honor, when there is no shame.<p>We live in a world, where children are told that "E" stands for Effort.

Favorite thing I like to remind myself day to day is:<p>Everyone is unique, nobody is special.<p>It really helps to put things in perspective.

I think that his problem is that he has always sought external validation. He wanted the world to affirm his greatness. This isn't likely to happen. The occupational world is interested only in treating one as a fungible resource. The world doesn't really care about many individuals, and they probably won't make an effort to validate them unless they do something remarkable.<p>Instead of trying to asses his merit through artificial criteria or measurements, he should strive for internal validation. He should find what makes him feel good, and pursue it. This is distinct from what <i>brings him pleasure.</i> Pursuing only pleasure had, in his case, turned out poorly. Moreover, I think that strict hedonism isn't congruous with the human condition: everyone needs aspirations and accomplishments.<p>On the education system: yeah, it's a mess. The chief problem is its inefficiency. I recall statistic stating that 70% of knowledge learned in school is lost throughout one's lifetime, and that only 3% is actively applied in one's day-to-day life or occupation. I'm not sure about the veracity of this, but I think that, regardless of the actual numbers, it's a fairly intuitive conclusion that the education system is a travesty.<p>This is derived from the increasing specificity as one ascends our various educational institutions. The foundational information: basic arithmetic, introductory english skills, ect. are applicable to almost all careers and lifestyles. Then, as science and history are thrown in and math becomes more complex, the content begins to lose its applicability. Then, at the secondary level, the information becomes so esoteric as to practically useless to everyone. Calculus is used in an incredibly small number of occupations, and could safely be relegated to the collegiate level. And yet, it is arguable the centerpiece of the education system.<p>The same could be said about lab science.<p>English, on the other hand, is a pivotal educational domain that is pertinent to one's success throughout school, but focuses on the wrong things. The various structures and constructs of english are emphasized, while the application is marginalized. If anything, the former belies the true nature of language: to communicate effectively. And yet, so little actual communication is done throughout schools as to be laughable. I recall never being given more than 1-2 essays per semester throughout middle and early high school. It's illogical to impress the specifics of the english language on students without compelling them to use those specifics. This is why I love my current english course: it focuses almost exclusively on argumentative analysis and writing.<p>The issue is not that these academic domains are unto themselves valueless or that they should not be taught. On the contrary, I find most of my courses to be incredibly edifying, and that even superfluous information has innate value. However, the function of the education system is not to instill knowledge for knowledge's sake, but to produce capable individuals prepared for the real world.

There is a difference between feeling "special" and being loved and I think that most Americanized (mine are not American but are def Americanized) is that they think they making us feel special equates to having us feel love.<p>This is not true.<p>You can have your cake and eat it too. You can demand effort and at the same time make the other person feel loved at the same time. This does not mean that they will always feel that way...or that you will be really good at doing that from day one, but I am pretty certain that you can do it. It is very expensive however, as in it will take a lot of time and effort.<p>My previous gf definitely felt loved by her parents and she was there in the architecture until 5 am night after night working like a dog, striving for perfection.<p>If she did not achieve, she would look forward to improving herself.<p>My parents on the other hand, specifically my dad, tried to tell us we were the most handsome, smartest, funniest of the bunch. This was of course not true, and even though I was the smartest for a long time throughout my childhood, it came to bite me in the ass because I never learned anything that didn't come easily to me (thankfully a whole bunch of things did come easily, but still I missed out on so much more.)<p>My mom is not as Americanized, but she had this tendency to tell us that we had to be the best, but didn't know how to communicate and tell us about all the hard work and how it is imperative that you be the worst before you become the best. You need to fail to get going.<p>1 year of Wellbutrin later, mediocre grades in high school and college, and now in my introduction to the workforce it is still hard to overcome a lot of the habits that this conditioning had on me.<p>I know I have to stick with it, I know I have to suck, I know I have to keep going, but it is hard to do so no matter how aware of the problem I am.<p>Fortunately, I am pretty happy with my life right now, which used to not be the case, and I am way more accepting of the fact that yes, I will suck. I'm a little worried as to how I will feel a few years from now, but really I don't care all that much. I no longer want to be a Zuckerberg, or a Steve Jobs, rather I just want to be happy and make people feel loved while making enough at the point where happiness becomes asymptotic.<p>I also want to be really good at something, but I think I've overcome my needs to be the best, or more precisely, the most recognized. This is doable. My work still sucks. It's going to be a lot of work to be excellent, but fortunately, forgetting about the recognition is great.<p>I wish myself luck. I forgive myself for having been so stupid when I was young. I forgive my parents for having been bad coaches and I try to correct them when they still tell me I'm special and the best (which is becoming a lot harder for them to do...haha). And that's it. The slate is clean! Let's get moving!

I'm really disappointed to see someone addicted to video games and unable to prioritize being used as this proselytizing platform in the comments here.