A Fail-Proof Method for Your Children to Succeed at Anything— Without Even Trying!

How a soccer coach transformed the world of parenting

After having lost five consecutive games to opposing teams, with the last one a dreadful 0–28 loss, our son’s coach finally found a brilliant new strategy to help his team recover their self-esteem.

It actually literally is brilliant. Glowing, in fact! Normally you don’t wear goggles for soccer, but he was positive this would raise morale.

The downside was the expense — two hundred per child — but he assured us that the long-term self-satisfaction would be worth it. Children who grew up having lost too many soccer games became morose and withdrawn, often turning into school shooters, Russian spies, or IRS workers. The goggles, he told us, were our only remedy.

We settled down anxiously for the next game, hoping against hope that he was right.

And indeed, ten minutes into the game, such cheering as you would not believe was heard echoing off the field in different directions, and some of it from quite a distance, as some of them had wandered into the baseball field. I didn’t blame them much; the goggles were certainly vision prohibitive.

The other team seemed a bit confused with the lack of opposition, but kept scoring with all their might and main, our team’s goalie suffering the same visual perception impairment as the rest of his team.

You never saw such high spirits on any team, I guarantee you. The goggles did have one unfortunate side effect (hardly worth mentioning with such morale), but they did seem to be curiously connected to getting concussions. I am sure it was pure coincidence, though, that they kept running into each other and the football goal posts, as they couldn’t see where they were going. We only lost three players, and they were carried off the field still quite happy, which was clearly the most important thing.

The game over, our team dashed off their goggles and went for a group hug — the finest display of team support and enthusiasm we had seen for a long time. “20–2! I can’t believe it!” shouted one. “No, it was 32–0!” shouted another. “Uh guys, we won 15–3, pretty positive,” another interrupted. And before we could stop them, it had dissolved into a free-for-all, each one insisting that his version of reality was correct.

Aside from a broken bone or two, bruises, scratches, and bloody noses, our team arose triumphant from the field, happily secure in his personal prowess, and confident for their next game. This was all we could ask as good parents and we thanked the coach with tears running down our faces to see our sons with such high self-esteem. Today we learned the important lesson that hard work is irreplaceable by everything except VR goggles.