The guy presenting works with a lot of schools - he began in Utah but has since gone international with some of their programs.

Anyway - one of the issues he identifies as being a problem is the fact that we don't have winners and losers in sports, we want all kids to get smiley faces and have good grades, etc.

So kids grow up being praised for everything and believing that they are awesome at everything. And when they face adversity and failure for the first time, they have no idea how to cope with it. Some kids can become so overwhelmed and depressed that they just see no way out. They lose all hope due to never having experienced it before.

Made me think quite a bit about how our worrying about self esteem and confidence to the point of not allowing kids to experience failures is simply setting them up for greater failures down the line.