Why Struggle Is Part of Learning

What if being "nice" is actually preventing the people you love from becoming resilient?

In this episode, we unpack one of the most powerful mindset shifts in parenting and leadership: the difference between being kind and being nice.

Through stories of untied shoes, dirty dishes, burned pizzas, streaky windows, and even a dented family van, we explore how our instinct to rescue can unintentionally rob others of the opportunity to build confidence, competence, and resilience.

In this conversation, you'll discover:

• Why the "quiet redo" may be doing more harm than good

• The difference between removing friction and building capability

• Why mistakes should lead to redos—not rescues

• How to teach methods instead of simply demanding outcomes

• Why resilience is built through struggle, not convenience

• The practical "Kind vs. Nice" decision tool you can use immediately

Whether you're raising children, leading a team, mentoring someone new, or trying to stop rescuing yourself from every discomfort, this framework offers a powerful lens for developing capable humans.

Kind sets standards. Nice removes them.

The goal was never simply to get the task done. The goal was always to build someone who could eventually do it on their own.

👇 Want the full 90-minute homeschool system? Get the free starter guide at

empoweredhomefront.com/homeschool

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to this deep dive. Today, our mission is to unpack a really fascinating piece of instructional material.

SPEAKER_01 0:07

Aaron Powell Yeah, it's from a program called the Empowered Home Front.

SPEAKER_00 0:10

Right. We're looking at a framework that was created by an instructor named Lori. And, you know, it was originally designed for parents who are trying to navigate the whole chaotic world of homeschooling.

SPEAKER_01 0:20

Aaron Ross Powell Which is incredibly chaotic.

SPEAKER_00 0:21

Oh, totally.

SPEAKER_01 0:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 0:23

But our goal here for you listening is to extract this really profound kind of identity-level shift in how we guide absolutely anyone we care about.

SPEAKER_01 0:33

Yeah, whether that's a child, a junior colleague, or you know, a mentee.

SPEAKER_00 0:39

We are exploring the completely counterintuitive and frankly really uncomfortable difference between being kind and being nice.

SPEAKER_01 0:46

It is a massive difference.

SPEAKER_00 0:48

It is. And to get there, we really have to talk about that universal moment, you know, that moment that happens anytime you're watching someone you care about try to do something new.

SPEAKER_01 0:56

Oh, yeah. The struggle.

SPEAKER_00 0:57

Right. They're fumbling, they're struggling, the gears are just visibly grinding, and before they even open their mouths to ask for help, your hand is already reaching out to do it for them.

SPEAKER_01 1:07

Yes. It's practically a reflex.

SPEAKER_00 1:09

It really is.

SPEAKER_01 1:10

It feels automatic. And um, it feels like it comes from a place of deep empathy, you know.

SPEAKER_00 1:15

Because you love them.

SPEAKER_01 1:16

Exactly. You see a struggle, and your immediate instinct is to just eliminate that struggle. It's a very natural human impulse to want to alleviate friction for the people we care about. Right. But what this framework establishes right out of the gate is that, well, while teaching the tactical stuff like math, history, or how to format a spreadsheet absolutely matters. A person's underlying ability to handle hard things isn't magically installed the day they turn 18.

SPEAKER_00 1:43

Or the day they graduate college.

SPEAKER_01 1:45

Right. That resilience is forged right now. It's built in these very small, daily, totally ordinary moments where you, as the guide, have to choose. You either hand over responsibility or you intercept it and take it back.

SPEAKER_00 1:57

Let's actually uncack that impulse for a second because it really reminds me of how we interact with technology.

SPEAKER_01 2:02

Oh, how so? It's like we act as a human autocorrect for the people we love. A human autocorrect. I like that. Right. You're watching someone type, you see them misspell a word, and you just reach over, hit backspace, and fix it for them so the document looks clean. Just bypassing them entirely. Exactly. We do it in real time because we think that's what support looks like. But if you zoom out, what happens when that autocorrect reflex goes unchecked for years?

SPEAKER_00 2:28

They never learn how to spell.

SPEAKER_01 2:29

Exactly. What happens to their ability to spell on their own? And that question brings us right into the reality of Lori's own household. And um, the moments where she admits she got this completely wrong.

SPEAKER_00 2:43

And it's so crucial that she frames these stories as personal confessions.

SPEAKER_01 2:47

Yeah, she's not pointing fingers at you.

SPEAKER_00 2:49

No, she isn't lecturing from a pedestal at all. She's looking at her own patterns. Take her son, Jackson, and his shoes. Oh the shoe story. Jackson was nine years old and could not tie his own shoes.

SPEAKER_01 3:00

Nine. Wait, nine years old? Nine. And Lori is brutally honest about why.

SPEAKER_00 3:06

Right. It wasn't a learning disability or anything.

SPEAKER_01 3:08

No, not at all. It wasn't because he had some inability to learn. It was simply because she, as the parent, never felt she had the time for the messy process of teaching him.

SPEAKER_00 3:19

I mean, think about a busy Tuesday morning.

SPEAKER_01 3:21

It's the worst.

SPEAKER_00 3:22

You're trying to get out the door, the clock is ticking, the bus is coming. And watching a kid fumble with shoelaces feels like watching paint dry.

SPEAKER_01 3:30

It's agonizing.

SPEAKER_00 3:31

It really is. So she didn't trust that he could get there fast enough. She optimized for speed instead of development.

SPEAKER_01 3:38

And she just stepped in and did it for him.

SPEAKER_00 3:40

Every single time.

SPEAKER_01 3:41

She literally robbed him of the chance to find out what he was capable of.

SPEAKER_00 3:44

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 3:45

And the resolution to this story is incredibly telling. When she finally recognized this pattern, when she stopped the autocorrect reflex, sat him down, and committed to the friction of teaching him, guess how long it took?

SPEAKER_00 3:57

How long?

SPEAKER_01 3:58

It took him exactly ten minutes to learn.

SPEAKER_00 4:00

Are you kidding? Ten minutes.

SPEAKER_01 4:02

Ten minutes of actual teaching, years of stepping in, resolved in ten minutes.

SPEAKER_00 4:07

That is wild.

SPEAKER_01 4:09

But this leads to an even more insidious habit she identifies, which she calls the quiet redo.

SPEAKER_00 4:15

Oh, the quiet redo. This one is entirely too relatable. Right. So Jackson would be tasked with washing the dishes, he'd do it, and every single plate would come back with food still stuck to it. Just gross. Gross. So what did the family do? They'd notice the dirty dishes, maybe make a vague, non-confrontational comment, and then just quietly rewash them themselves before dinner.

SPEAKER_01 4:38

Just to get it done.

SPEAKER_00 4:39

Exactly. Because it was faster. The meal was coming and nobody had the energy for a full-blown lesson on soap application.

SPEAKER_01 4:46

The quiet redo is such a dangerous trap.

SPEAKER_00 4:49

Why is it so dangerous though?

SPEAKER_01 4:51

Because it's entirely driven by the adult's desire for convenience, but it masquerades as keeping the peace.

SPEAKER_00 4:57

Oh, that's so true. We think we're being nice.

SPEAKER_01 4:59

We think we're being generous by not making a big deal out of it. But if we look at the psychology of what is actually happening here, what does that quiet redo teach the child?

SPEAKER_00 5:08

It teaches them a localized version of learned helplessness. Because we're essentially subsidizing incompetence. We are training their brain that their effort is completely disconnected from the final outcome.

SPEAKER_01 5:20

Precisely. The human brain learns through a direct feedback loop of cause and effect. I do a bad job washing a plate, I eat off a dirty plate. Right. But when you quietly step in and fix it, you sever that feedback loop, you teach them that someone else will always come behind them to clean up their mess.

SPEAKER_00 5:39

Aaron Powell So they aren't actually responsible for the standard of the final product. Exactly. But let me play devil's advocate for a second here. Sure. If we are incredibly busy, which everyone is, whether you're managing a household or managing a whole department at a tech company, isn't stepping in just ruthlessly efficient?

SPEAKER_01 5:57

Aaron Powell In the short term, yes.

SPEAKER_00 5:58

Right. Like, isn't quietly rewriting a junior employee's report just a practical way to avoid a meltdown, hit a deadline, and keep things moving? Life is moving fast. We don't always have time to sit in the friction.

SPEAKER_01 6:10

It is efficient in the micro moment, without a doubt. But the core argument here is that stepping in never actually protects a person from failure. It doesn't. No. It merely delays that failure to a later date. Ah. You are pushing the failure to a time when they're older, when the stakes are exponentially higher, and when you are no longer standing over their shoulder to fix it.

SPEAKER_00 6:32

Oh. That's a heavy realization.

SPEAKER_01 6:35

It was for Lori. She realized the problem in her house was not a lack of capable children. The problem was a parent who was unwilling to endure the slow, uncomfortable part of watching them struggle.

SPEAKER_00 6:49

So if nice is secretly about minimizing friction for the adult right now, then kind has to be the exact opposite.

SPEAKER_01 6:56

Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 6:56

It must be intentionally leaning into that friction because you're focused on the long-term result. This forces us to completely redefine what good support actually looks like.

SPEAKER_01 7:05

And that is the central paradigm shift of this entire framework. The definitions are incredibly sharp.

SPEAKER_00 7:10

Let's break them down.

SPEAKER_01 7:11

So nice is the version of guidance that feels good in the present moment.

SPEAKER_00 7:15

Like rewashing the dish.

SPEAKER_01 7:17

Right. Nice rewashes the dish because explaining it again takes too much energy. Nice ties the shoes because you're running late. Fundamentally, nice is motivated by conflict avoidance.

SPEAKER_00 7:27

It avoids the learner's frustration and it avoids your own frustration.

SPEAKER_01 7:31

Exactly. Nice removes standards.

SPEAKER_00 7:34

And kind.

SPEAKER_01 7:35

Kind is much, much harder. Kind sits down and teaches the method. Kind says, We are learning to tie shoes today, and actually means it, knowing it will derail the entire morning schedule. Right. Kind is motivated entirely by who this person is becoming, not by how easy the next 10 minutes are going to be. Kind sets standards.

SPEAKER_00 7:56

Here's where it gets really interesting to me. Nice is like giving a hungry person a fish just so they stop complaining right now and you can get back to your day.

SPEAKER_01 8:05

Yes, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 8:06

Kind is putting up with the agonizing, tangled fishing line process of actually teaching them how to catch it themselves.

SPEAKER_01 8:13

That's a great way to put it.

SPEAKER_00 8:14

To put another visual on this, think about teaching someone to ride a bike.

SPEAKER_01 8:18

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 8:18

Nice is putting training wheels on that bike and never taking them off. You avoid the scraped knees today, there are no tears, and you can comfortably walk next to them.

SPEAKER_01 8:26

But they don't learn balance.

SPEAKER_00 8:28

Right. You guarantee that they won't know how to balance when they finally hit a busy street on their own. Kind is running behind the bike, letting go of the seat, and letting them wobble.

SPEAKER_01 8:38

Wobble is terrifying.

SPEAKER_00 8:39

It is. But that wobble, that unstable friction, is literally the only way the brain's vestibular system can receive the error signals required to map out the mechanics of balance. The brain needs the wobble.

SPEAKER_01 8:53

That is a perfect encapsulation of the neurology behind this. And a crucial part of that kind process is that you can't just push them down the hill without explaining how the petals work.

SPEAKER_00 9:04

Right. You have to actually teach them.

SPEAKER_01 9:05

You have to teach the method. You cannot demand a high-level result if you haven't provided the cognitive scaffolding to achieve it.

SPEAKER_00 9:12

And we see two great examples of this method factor and practice in the source material. First, there's her daughter Kaylee.

SPEAKER_01 9:18

The pizza incident.

SPEAKER_00 9:19

The pizza incident. So Kaylee was cooking by herself for the first time and completely incinerated a pizza, just burned it to a crisp because she forgot to set a timer.

SPEAKER_01 9:28

And the nice reflex might be to just throw the pizza away, sigh, and order takeout to avoid a crying fit.

SPEAKER_00 9:34

Totally. But Lori traced the failure back to its root. Kaylee didn't know to set a timer because Lori herself grew up in a house that never used timers. Oh, interesting. Yeah. She realized she had never actually taught her daughter the executive function of managing time in the kitchen.

SPEAKER_01 9:51

And you contrast that with her husband, Eric.

SPEAKER_00 9:53

Right. Eric is the opposite.

SPEAKER_01 9:55

He always uses timers and nothing in his kitchen ever burns. And the book points out that isn't some innate culinary genius. It's just a built habit.

SPEAKER_00 10:03

It's a method.

SPEAKER_01 10:04

Exactly. Once they recognize this missing cognitive scaffold, they didn't just tell the kids, don't burn the food. They explicitly taught them the method. Set a timer for literally everything that goes on the stove.

SPEAKER_00 10:17

And we see the exact same thing with Jackson's dishwashing saga. When Lori finally stopped the quiet redo, she sat down with him and asked a seemingly random question.

SPEAKER_01 10:26

How do you color a box?

SPEAKER_00 10:27

Yes, how do you color a box? And he looked at her and said, From the outside in.

SPEAKER_01 10:32

That's brilliant.

SPEAKER_00 10:33

It is. And she told him, You wash a dish the exact same way. Outside in, soap on every surface, rinse it completely. She didn't just say wash it better. She gave him a heuristic.

SPEAKER_01 10:44

A mental model he already understood, mapped on to a new task.

SPEAKER_00 10:48

Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 10:49

But you know, giving someone a mental model is really only the first half of the equation.

SPEAKER_00 10:52

Because they're still going to mess up.

SPEAKER_01 10:54

They absolutely will. The real collision between kind and nice happens the moment that mental model fails.

SPEAKER_00 11:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 11:01

Because they try, and the outcome is still wrong. Right. What you do in that exact moment defines whether you're building resilience or destroying it. And that brings us to the concept of the redo.

SPEAKER_00 11:13

Yes, the redo. This is where the rubber meets the road. Let's look at a slightly higher stakes scenario from the curriculum. The window story.

SPEAKER_01 11:21

Oh, this one is rough.

SPEAKER_00 11:23

Jackson and his brother Tyler were given a massive job washing all the windows on their ranch house, inside and out.

SPEAKER_01 11:29

Which takes hours.

SPEAKER_00 11:30

Hours. They did the whole house. But when Lori checked the work, it was a disaster. The windows were super streaky, they just weren't clean.

SPEAKER_01 11:37

Here is the crossroads. The old conflict avoidant, nice version of Lori would have thanked them for their effort, waited until they went outside to play, and spent 20 minutes just rewashing the glass herself.

SPEAKER_00 11:50

It would have been so efficient.

SPEAKER_01 11:51

It would have. But the kind Lori called them back in and made them redo the entire job.

SPEAKER_00 11:57

All of it.

SPEAKER_01 11:58

All of it. And look at the psychological shift that occurs here. The kids got it right within one or two tries on the redo.

SPEAKER_00 12:05

Right. They didn't magically absorb a master class in window washing in five minutes.

SPEAKER_01 12:09

No. They got it right because they were given direct, honest feedback. And more importantly, they were trusted with the agency to fix it themselves.

SPEAKER_00 12:17

That's a huge point.

SPEAKER_01 12:18

There's a brilliant realization here. Mistakes don't mean stop, they mean try differently.

SPEAKER_00 12:23

Mistakes don't mean stop. I love that.

SPEAKER_01 12:25

The leader's job is to create an environment where trying again is the standard, rather than stepping in and rendering their effort meaningless.

SPEAKER_00 12:33

Which perfectly elevates us to the absolute high stakes story here. Because washing windows is one thing. If you mess up, you just get a smudge. What happens when the cost of failure is actual property damage? The lawnmower. The lawnmower. Eight-year-old Tyler, who had been driving equipment around their property, backed a riding lawnmower directly into the side of Lori's van. Oh man. He didn't just scratch the paint, he left a massive structural dent.

SPEAKER_01 13:00

A literal nightmare scenario for any parent or manager, really. This is the equivalent of a junior developer accidentally deleting the production database.

SPEAKER_00 13:10

Exactly. But look at how Tyler handled the aftermath. He didn't run, he didn't try to hide the mower or blame his brother. He walked inside immediately and confessed exactly what happened.

SPEAKER_01 13:19

Which takes cuts.

SPEAKER_00 13:20

It does. He faced a real consequence for not paying attention, and he was noticeably nervous around the vehicles for a while. But the truly fascinating part of this psychology is what happens the next summer.

SPEAKER_01 13:31

Fast forward a year, and Tyler approaches his parents entirely unprompted.

SPEAKER_00 13:35

Unprompted.

SPEAKER_01 13:36

He tells them he wants to take over the yard maintenance completely.

SPEAKER_00 13:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 13:39

The cutting, the weed eating, the blowing. He even had a business proposal and a price in mind to negotiate.

SPEAKER_00 13:45

Wait, he dented a van with a mower, and his response a year later is to ask for more responsibility using that exact same equipment. Yes. Lori admits she was terrified. Her instinct was to say no, it's too risky. Of course. But her husband thought Tyler could handle it. So they handed over the keys. Lori talks about watching him through the window, fighting every single instinct in her body to run outside and hover over him.

SPEAKER_01 14:10

That takes so much restraint.

SPEAKER_00 14:11

But he did it. He navigated the yard all summer, did a great job, and earned his money.

SPEAKER_01 14:16

That is the ultimate validation of the kind framework.

SPEAKER_00 14:19

Why do you think he leaned into responsibility instead of hiding from it?

SPEAKER_01 14:23

Because navigating that massive failure a year prior and surviving it without having his agency permanently revoked taught him that a mistake is an event, not an identity.

SPEAKER_00 14:34

An event, not an identity.

SPEAKER_01 14:35

Wow. By not rescuing him from the consequence, they allowed him to build the internal fortitude to trust himself again.

SPEAKER_00 14:42

Aaron Powell But I have to ask the question that I know a lot of people are thinking right now.

SPEAKER_01 14:45

Go for it.

SPEAKER_00 14:46

Letting kids redo a whole house of windows or trusting someone who just cost you money to take on even more responsibility, that sounds utterly exhausting. It is. It sounds risky. Is the payoff really worth the daily stress of holding that line and sitting in that friction?

SPEAKER_01 15:01

Aaron Powell It's a totally varied concern, and we shouldn't sugarcoat the reality of this approach. It requires an immense amount of upfront sacrifice from the mentor.

SPEAKER_00 15:10

It's significantly slower.

SPEAKER_01 15:12

So much slower. Carving out 30 minutes to teach shoe tying when you're already late for work is a sacrifice.

SPEAKER_00 15:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 15:18

There will be ruined dinners, there will be dirty dishes sitting in the sink.

SPEAKER_00 15:23

Massive projects that have to be scrapped and done twice. Yes. It sounds like an operational mess.

SPEAKER_01 15:27

It is a mess. But the critical insight here is that this mess is not an indicator of systemic failure. This mess is exactly what the mechanics of learning look like in real time.

SPEAKER_00 15:37

Right.

SPEAKER_01 15:38

Neuroplasticity requires friction. You are explicitly trading short-term operational convenience for long-term human capability.

SPEAKER_00 15:47

And let's vividly picture that long-term capability because the curriculum paints this really clear picture. Imagine that child at 18 or 22 years old. Or imagine that junior employee three years down the line. They're out in the world facing a genuinely chaotic, difficult situation completely alone. A tire blows out on a dark highway, or a major client account goes sideways, and the boss is unreachable.

SPEAKER_01 16:13

The real tests.

SPEAKER_00 16:14

Right. And they don't panic. Why? Is it because their life leading up to that moment was perfectly frictionless and smoothed over by a human autocorrect?

SPEAKER_01 16:23

Definitely not.

SPEAKER_00 16:24

No. It's because they have a deep internal database of evidence built in thousands of small moments at home or in the office, proving that hard things are workable. They have a track record of figuring things out when the initial attempt fails.

SPEAKER_01 16:37

They know that trying again is always an option because you gave them the psychological safety to try again when they were nine years old or when they were a first-year intern. You built that resilience in the morning when you refused to tie their shoes, and you solidified it in the afternoon when you made them rewash the windows instead of doing it for them.

SPEAKER_00 16:54

Which brings us to a brilliantly practical tool Lori offers to actually execute the shift. It's called the kind versus nice card.

SPEAKER_01 17:02

I love this tool.

SPEAKER_00 17:03

It's so good. She doesn't just suggest you keep this philosophy in the back of your mind. She instructs you to physically print it out and put it exactly where the hardest, most frustrating moments happen.

SPEAKER_01 17:16

Right. Tape it to the refrigerator, stick it on the laundry room door, put it on the bezel of your computer monitor.

SPEAKER_00 17:22

Wherever you lose your patience.

SPEAKER_01 17:24

Exactly. You place it right at the scene of the crime where your amygdala flares up and your urge to step in and take over is the absolute strongest.

SPEAKER_00 17:32

And the mechanism of the card is a literal pattern interrupt. When you feel that autocorrect reflex firing, when you're reaching out to fix something they are perfectly capable of fixing themselves, you look at the card.

SPEAKER_01 17:44

And what does it say?

SPEAKER_00 17:45

Well, the left column lists the thought you're having in that exact moment of rush or frustration. It's faster if I do it, or I just want this done right.

SPEAKER_01 17:53

We've all had those thoughts.

SPEAKER_00 17:55

Then you force your eyes to the right column, which lists what you are actually building if you hold the line. It says things like, I am building a capable adult, or I am teaching resilience. That's powerful. It forces a wedge between your impulse and your action. It reminds you why sitting in the irritation of this specific moment is the only way to achieve the long-term goal.

SPEAKER_01 18:17

It's a behavioral circuit breaker. It forces you to stop and ask a very confronting question. Am I acting out of a desire for my own immediate emotional comfort, or am I acting out of a genuine desire for their long-term growth?

SPEAKER_00 18:31

And I really want to point this out directly to you, the listener. Think about your own environment. Even if you don't have kids, this framework maps perfectly onto any hierarchical relationship.

SPEAKER_01 18:40

Oh, absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 18:41

Think about managing a team at work. Think about mentoring a junior colleague. How many times this week have you done someone else's job for them just to get it off your desk?

SPEAKER_01 18:49

We all do it.

SPEAKER_00 18:50

Every time you quietly rewrite a junior developer's code without walking them through the errors, every time you step in and solve a complex client issue for a junior rep because it's faster than explaining it, you are executing the quiet redo.

SPEAKER_01 19:04

You're being nice.

SPEAKER_00 19:05

You are being nice, you're avoiding fiction, but you are absolutely not being kind. You are actively robbing them of the reps they need to prove to themselves that they can handle the weight of the job.

SPEAKER_01 19:16

Exactly. You're prioritizing your own ease over their empowerment. The underlying mechanics of human development are identical, whether you're in a kitchen or a boardroom.

SPEAKER_00 19:27

So to synthesize this entire shift and distill the ultimate takeaway from this deep dive, kind sets standards while nice removes them.

SPEAKER_01 19:35

That's the perfect summary.

SPEAKER_00 19:36

I just love the way this philosophy crystallizes at the end. The goal was never just to have a clean dish. The goal was always to build a kid or an employee or a partner who knows how to wash one.

SPEAKER_01 19:47

That really is the thesis of the whole paradigm. But you know, if we take this framework and turn the lens completely around on your own life, it leaves us with a pretty provocative question to sit with.

SPEAKER_00 19:58

Ooh, what's that?

SPEAKER_01 19:59

Well, we've spent this entire time analyzing how stepping in and removing friction steals another person's opportunity to build resilience. But look at your own day-to-day existence.

SPEAKER_00 20:11

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 20:11

In what areas of your life are you letting the frictionless convenience of modern, nice solutions, whether that's relying entirely on technology, outsourcing every difficult chore, or just structuring your routine to avoid all discomfort, quietly steal your own opportunities.

SPEAKER_00 20:27

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 20:28

Where are you subsidizing your own incompetence and robbing yourself of the chance to prove that you can still navigate the wobble and handle hard things?

SPEAKER_00 20:35

Oh man, who is the autocorrect in our own lives? Exactly. Are we designing a life so frictionless that we're auto correcting ourselves out of our own resilience? That is a heavy, necessary thought to chew on. Thank you so much for joining us on this deep dive. Until next time, keep an eye out for those quiet redoes in your life and maybe let the bike wobble a little bit. Take care.