Monday, October 7, 2013

All that parental help is crippling your kids, folks

... as if we didn't see it every day.

New York magazine has an article about the expectation that you will grease all the hinges and open all the doors for your kids to get them a leg up in life -- and what it does to the kids themselves.

Some flava:
It's the world that's wrong, Bobby.
What parents are really telling children with their constant intervening is that there’s no way for them to succeed on their own, says Harold Koplewicz, a founder of the Child Mind Institute. “The message to the kid is, You aren’t good enough.” He compares these parents to “fixers,” who illicitly manipulate outcomes for their clients. In their effort to build their children’s success, parents may actually be short-circuiting their self-esteem, and stunting their self-efficacy, making them unable to tell the difference between the things they can accomplish in the world, with the application of hard work and native ability, and the things they cannot. Jason Stevens is somewhat blunter. A fixing parent can make a child, he says, “crippled. Or entitled. Or both.”
Read it all: Is ethical parenting possible?. The title is a bit overblown, but then the kids get that from somewhere, don't they?

17 comments:

  1. This comment has been removed by the author.

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    1. There's no graphic for this post.

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    2. There are no labels, either.

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    3. Most posters do not provide graphics. Most of them come from Cal. But he does sleep 5 hours a day, and is often on a golf course, so graphics do not always appear instantaneously.

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    4. The site is free and run by volunteers. Quitcherbitchin.

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    5. Crayon Eater has a point, but as "members," we should have the right to call them out when they're half-assing it. The problem didn't bug me, but if it bothered PP, then that's valid, too.

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    6. And the site is not free. If you know anything about the web, you know they are making a hundred thousand dollars a year (easy) from those ads. 'Nuff said. It may seem free, but it costs!

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    7. What? Who's half-assing it? Are you kidding???

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    8. I don't recall paying to read this site. That's what I meant by "free."

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    9. It's pennies a day, and its distribution has long been public. If you have a specific problem, please contact the mods.

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    10. Hundreds of thousands of dollars? If that were possible, I'd quit teaching today and instead blog away.

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    11. Y'all are providing free lunch to the Jotnar. Please stop.

      Here's a better plan.

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  2. Here's one thing I took from the article:

    I'm so glad I don't live in New York.

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  3. wait? We don;t have to do our own graphics! So, if I do my own is that Scholarship or Service for my tenure file???

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  4. Aside from a few typos, great article. I wonder, though, how many parents read things like this and think up all kinds of excuses to excuse their own behavior and condemn others. When I have my students write about social issues like this, they always deny that it's a problem for them and have a cousin or best friend who experiences problems from helicopter parenting, but never them!

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  5. I'd have done my own graphic, but Cal did a much better job. I especially love the caption. I may blur it somewhat if I find the time... but if Cal beats me to it, that's OK too.

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  6. Now you know why I stopped volunteering to judge science fair projects years ago: all the projects were obviously done by parents. Every last one of the posters was laminated, for crying out loud.

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