We must teach our children how to respond to life’s challenges.

From the time they are born until the time they enter a more traditional classroom setting (oftentimes, as five-years-olds, or in a public school setting, a kindergarten classroom), we provide support, care, and love in hopes that challenges will be smaller, and not larger.

Unfortunately, in a more traditional K-12th grade classroom where teachers and students are competing for time, teachers are not modeling with best practices, how to respond to life's challenges. Quite the opposite is taking place. Academic and social learning becomes very deficit-based, with an intensive focus on weaknesses and flaws. In this type of setting, students are not learning resilience, responsibility, and independence. One nonprofit, the Institute for Teaching, explains that "Students commented that this deficit model made them feel, at times, inadequate, insecure, and worse, as failures. Students indicated they really were not in school to learn, but to pass tests and that, while they enjoyed their teachers and school they did not realize there was another way to learn."