The consequences increase exponentially.

For instance–no one likes failure, but experiencing it early and learning how to recover from it builds a resilience towards its effects. As a child, you may have to repeat a task, suffer a bad grade or deal with disappointment over a losing a competition, but you learn that life goes on and other opportunities will happen.

The longer one waits for this lesson, the harder the fall will be when it inevitably happens. In some cases, you even see a full withdraw from society.

Getting something you didn’t earn can lead to entitlement (this is happening with mark inflation in education), which leads to a system shock when things don’t magically go your way all the time… or ever.

Lack of responsibility can lead to never taking any, then spending a lifetime of blaming others rather than taking action.

Many of these lessons cycle back in our lives, but a strong foundation in place turns those moments into a stumble rather than a fall.