Chapter: “Raised, But Not Trained:”

Where I come from, we confuse raising children with training them. There’s a big difference. Raising means making sure they eat. Making sure they have a bed to sleep in, and clothes on their backs. That’s basic survival. But training? That’s preparing them for life. That’s giving them the tools, the mindset, and the habits to face the world and not just survive—but make smart decisions when everything around them is falling apart.

When Navy SEALs get dropped into chaos, when the bullets start flying and everything goes left, they don’t panic. They fall back on their training. It becomes instinct. Muscle memory. Discipline. Because before they ever stepped on the battlefield, someone trained them for the war.

Now let me ask you this—what kind of training are our kids falling back on? When they get confronted by peer pressure, when they get pulled into fights, when they’re offered pills, when the streets start talking to them sweet—what do they fall back on?

Too often, the answer is nothing. Because nobody ever trained them.

Their parents didn’t train them, because they were too busy trying to survive themselves. Mom’s working two jobs, maybe more. She’s barely home, and when she is, she’s exhausted. She feeds them, makes sure they’re breathing, maybe does a quick homework check—but that’s it. Dad? Maybe he’s around. Maybe he’s not. Maybe he’s driving trucks in another state, making more kids in different zip codes. And even if he’s there, maybe no one ever trained him either. So what can he pass down?

This isn’t an attack on parents. This is the reality in too many communities like mine. Parents are doing what they can. They’re raising their kids the best way they know how. But survival isn’t training. Survival is the bare minimum. And when all a child knows is survival, they grow up reacting instead of thinking. Surviving instead of thriving. Guess who steps in when there’s no real training at home? The streets.

The streets don’t just raise kids—they train them. The streets teach them how to hustle, how to fight, how to manipulate, how to suppress emotions, how to numb pain. The streets teach them that love is weakness, that respect is earned through violence, and that power is more important than purpose. And it’s effective training—because it’s physical. It’s lived. It’s real-time.

And that’s how we lose another generation.

Drug dealers. Robbers. Prodigies in pain. Young boys with pistols tucked in their waistband because they don’t feel safe anywhere. Girls being groomed into prostitution before they’ve even had a chance to be little girls. Kids who know more about fentanyl than they do about financial literacy. That’s not just neglect—that’s the absence of training. And it’s a cycle that repeats itself until somebody breaks it.

So the question is—what’s the solution?

It’s not another speech. It’s not another motivational post online that gets shared and forgotten. Verbal solutions don’t hit the same when you’re hungry. When your mom is nodding off in the living room, high on heroin. When your older brother is locked up doing 100 years. You can’t “I have a dream” that away. You can’t quote Martin Luther King Jr. or throw a Bible verse at a kid who just watched his best friend get shot yesterday.

These kids need physical solutions.

They need mentors who don’t just talk, but show up. Coaches who don’t just yell plays, but teach discipline, consistency, and accountability. Teachers who see past the trauma and help their students navigate through it. We need programs that meet them where they are—not where we think they should be.

They need safe spaces. Real ones. Gyms, rec centers, after-school programs, mentorship circles—places where they can come and just be kids, learn life skills, and most importantly, learn how to think. Not what to think. But how.

We need to teach emotional intelligence. Conflict resolution. Decision-making under pressure. Financial literacy. Communication. Self-worth. We need to train them in purpose, not just punish them for pain. Because when life throws them chaos—and it will—they’ll either fall back on the training we gave them, or the training the streets gave them.

And the streets don’t care if they live or die.

We have to stop just raising kids and start training them. Raising ends at 18. But training? Training lasts a lifetime. Because what you fall back on in your worst moment can either save your life—or cost you everything.

So let’s build something real for them. Not just words, but action. Not just hope, but a plan. Because our kids are out here in a war zone. And the truth is, if we don’t train them, the streets will.

That wasn’t in the playbook, but it should be.

MICHAEL A. WYCHE

OWNER AND CEO

MICHAEL WYCHE ENTERPRISES