Two weeks ago, Texas football powerhouse Aledo beat Western Hills 91-0, spawning a complaint from a Western Hills father who considered the loss to be bullying his son and the rest of the team. The idea that a kid’s failure is somehow unfair or wrong is much more significant that the loss itself.

Aledo played their starters a grand total of 21 plays and Aledo’s head coach Tim Buchanan asked the officials to keep the clock running in the third and fourth quarter, significantly shortening the game.

Aledo’s starting running back only had four carries before he was pulled. All four rushes went for touchdowns.

Aledo was simply a better team than Western Hills and they should not be punished for being more talented.

Everybody that has played competitive sports has been hammered at some point in their career. It does not ruin their entire life, it is just part of being an athlete. Sometimes you are the hammer and sometimes you are the nail. Until recently, that was an accepted premise for high school athletes.

There is a trend sweeping the United States in which parents try to protect their kids from failures of any kind. Ironically, that shelter can handicap their children later on in life.

Losing a football game, failing a test or not getting accepted into a certain club or program is wonderful training for life. In fact, youth sports are valuable because they teach children to deal with success and failure in a healthy way.
In life there are few certainties, but one of them is failure. Every person in the world has dealt with disappointment, and knowing how to respond to that disappointment is crucial in determining the way our lives will go.

Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team as a freshman. Donald Trump has filed for bankruptcy twice. Steven Spielberg dropped out of theater school. Even the people who eventually would master their professions were once failures.

When parents run to the aid of their children the first time they fail, kids will naturally begin to think that someone will always fix their problems and they will not know how to fix their own issues.

Dealing with difficult situations is one of the most important things that a kid can learn before starting adulthood, so, hopefully, parents will allow their kids to fail so that later on in life they will be prepared to succeed.