What Mad Men Taught Me About Raising Capable Kids

Houston, TX.

When Caroline started violin at 3, it was painful.

Private lessons were $25 for 30 minutes—which felt like a lot in 2011—and half the time she was rolling around on the carpet instead of listening to her teacher.

I wanted to quit.

It was embarrassing.

It felt like a complete waste of time and money.

But something inside me kept saying: I want her to learn how to do hard things.

A few years ago, I thought about this while visiting a dorm at UPenn.

I couldn't believe how many Postmates deliveries were sitting downstairs.

These kids had meal plans!

Alexandra and I have had many discussions about her food allowance at Penn, and I refuse to give her an amount that makes ordering Postmates for every meal easy.

Not because Postmates is bad.

Because friction can be good.

Behavioral economists talk about "friction costs"—the little obstacles between wanting something and getting it.

Technology is fantastic at removing them.

Hungry → tap phone → dinner appears.

But if you have to make dinner, you have to plan.

Get the ingredients. Screw something up. Clean up. Figure it out.

The meal is almost beside the point.

The friction is the education.

It's one reason I love Peggy Olson in Mad Men.

Peggy becomes great at advertising because she is constantly doing things she doesn't know how to do yet.

She watches.

Listens.

Gets embarrassed.

Gets rejected.

Makes bad pitches.

Tries again.

She's not just becoming a better copywriter.

She's becoming Peggy Olson.

And eventually violin clicked for Caroline, too.

After six months of rolling around on the floor, she took off.

A year later in Houston (this photo), she was begging me to let her take lessons twice a week with her new teacher Juliette Javaheri because once a week wasn't enough.

What doing hard thing teaches us is:

This is hard → I practice → I struggle → I get better → I discover I can do hard things.

Maybe in our quest to give our kids everything, we're accidentally taking something away.

Money can buy our kids convenience.

It can't buy them competence.

What hard thing did you have to figure out as a kid that made you think: I can do this?

It might be the very thing that gives you purpose.

If you are struggling with which direction to take, it might help to look back at doing hard things as a child.

Tiffany Kent

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