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Please Stop Telling Your Kids to Have a Plan B
There’s a difference between being practical and killing dreams
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My father gave me two pieces of advice when I was very young. First, never dig a pile of dirt from the middle. (Shovel at the bottom, so the dirt falls into the blade.) And second, always live in a ranch-style home. (So you can still get around all of it when you’re old).
I was not raised by my father. My parents divorced when I was an infant, leaving my mother to raise four sons by herself. That’s why his advice didn’t involve anything time-consuming or with multiple steps, like how to shave or barbecue ribs. What I gleaned from him I had to get during random and sparse weekend visits, and after a certain age, even those became largely unnecessary. But we had the relationship we had; it was not an unpleasant one, and twice he had a useful piece of advice to offer.
In short, I’m not the product of fatherly advice. I don’t have a list of aphorisms handed down, father to son, that has guided me through life, save for the parts where dirt and real estate were involved. Who I am comes largely from trial and error, being thrown in various fires or deep ends, and matriarchal admonishments, in that order. That reads harsher than intended, but I turned out awesome, so I’m not complaining and neither should you.
Advice is a tricky thing, and the most perilous version of it is the parent-to-child remix. Most of it is well-meaning and the best of it comes from hard-won experience. Parental advice is generally perceived to be a series of life hacks aimed at keeping loved ones from the pitfalls of ignorance and stubbornness, and I would argue that most of it holds true.
But if there’s one piece of advice that I could convince parents to stop giving, it would be the notion of the backup plan. The most popular version of this idea is, “Have a plan you can fall back on.” On the surface it not only sounds like good advice, but harmless advice. And I suppose there are children who might benefit from hearing it if it weren’t so obvious. But my advice on this subject remains: If you are telling your children to have a backup…
