There’s a question Malcolm Gladwell raises in David and Goliath that most parents would sprint away from if they saw it coming:

If you could choose your child’s brain wiring… would you choose dyslexia?

Gladwell doesn’t ask it to be provocative.
He asks it because a surprising number of wildly successful entrepreneurs are dyslexic—even though the vast majority of dyslexics struggle brutally.

It’s a horrible, uncomfortable question by design.

And the older I get, the more it hits a little too close to home.

Because when I aim that question at myself—Would I choose my wiring?—I honestly don’t know how to answer.

It’s a brutal question: would I swap my brain for a different one if I could?
A smoother one?
One that stayed focused in meetings and didn’t melt during everyday family chaos?

If someone forced me to decide at gunpoint, I’d probably keep what I have—not because it’s been easy, but because every version of struggle has carved something into me I don’t want to lose.

Reason one: the person I’m becoming didn’t come from comfort.
I’m self-aware today because I had to be.
Because I couldn’t coast.
Because I’ve spent years trying to understand why my nervous system hijacks me at the worst possible moments.

Reason two: I don’t know who I’d be without this wiring.
The parts that make life harder are tangled up with the parts that make me… me.
The pattern recognition.
The sideways way my brain solves problems.
The ability to connect things other people don’t even notice.

So would I choose this wiring again?
I don’t know.

But I know I wouldn’t want to lose the parts of myself that only exist because of it.

Here’s the twist Gladwell doesn’t let you dodge:

If I’m unsure about choosing my wiring for myself, I’m absolutely sure I wouldn’t choose it for my kids.

Not even close.

Because the trauma wasn’t cute.
It wasn’t character-building in the inspirational-poster way.
It was heavy.
It was sickeningly difficult.

The anxiety of always feeling a step behind.
The adrenaline spike when the teacher started calling on kids to read out loud and I realized my name was coming.
The quiet competition that made everyone else seem smarter, quicker, better.

That stuff burrowed deep.

And if you told me my kids could bypass every ounce of that?
I’d sign the paperwork before you finished the sentence.

But then the contradiction lands:

I want my kids to be strong, resilient, compassionate humans.
I don’t want them to float through life untouched.
I want them to wrestle with things that don’t come naturally.

I want them to become the kind of adults who know themselves.

But I don’t want them to suffer the way I did.
I want the strength without the scar tissue—and every parent knows that’s not how it works.

My 8-year-old son struggles with reading.
He tells me about how the teacher tries to “speed him up,” how the pressure builds, how his whole body tenses.

I can see it—the dread in his eyes, the frustration in his voice.

And in that moment, I’m not just a dad.

I’m a kid again.
Sick to my stomach before my turn.
Praying for a fire drill or a meteor or divine intervention.

I hate that he feels it.
I hate how familiar it is.

And instantly, the Gladwell question gets sharper:

If the struggle built me, am I supposed to let it build him too?
Or do I protect him from it so he doesn’t grow the same scars?

No parenting book answers that.
Pinterest sure as hell doesn’t.
And the dads in the school pickup line aren’t showing their cards either.

Gladwell talks about something called “desirable difficulties”: challenges that force someone to develop compensatory strengths.

It sounds great until you realize the truth:

You can’t manufacture desirable difficulties for your kids.
You can’t guarantee the upside.
You can’t predict who becomes the resilient entrepreneur and who becomes the kid who never recovers.

Hard things only look “desirable” in hindsight.

Usually decades later.

The survivors tell stories.
The rest stay silent.

So the real question isn’t whether adversity builds character.

It’s whether you’re willing to roll the dice with your kid’s nervous system.

And most dads—if they’re honest—aren’t.

Here’s what I’m slowly realizing, the hard way:

My kids don’t need the trauma that shaped me.
They don’t need my childhood.

They don’t need to learn through dread, shame, or fear.

But they also don’t need bubble wrap.
They don’t need me smoothing every edge.

They need something else entirely:

They need someone who understands their wiring because he’s living inside a similar one.

Someone who can say:

“Yeah, this is hard.
Your brain’s not broken.
Let’s figure out how it works.”

Not to spare them from struggle—
but to spare them from believing struggle means something is wrong with them.

So would I choose this wiring for myself?
I still don’t know.

Would I choose it for my kids?
No.
Not if I had the option.

But I don’t have the option.

All I can do is meet them in the place where fear and potential collide—and stand with them instead of pushing them through it.

And maybe that’s the whole point Gladwell was hinting at:

We don’t get to choose our wiring.
We only get to choose how we carry it—
and how we help our kids carry theirs.

I’m still figuring that part out.

And maybe that’s exactly where I’m supposed to be.

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