Why helicopter parenting is ruining a generation of children

So are you a helicopter parent? Here are some of Lythcott-Haims’s simple tests:

- Check your language. “If you say ‘we’ when you mean your son or your daughter — as in, ‘We’re on the travel soccer team’ — it’s a hint to yourself that you are intertwined in a way that is unhealthy,” Lythcott-Haims said

- Examine your interactions with adults in your child’s life. “If you’re arguing with teachers and principals and coaches and umpires all the time, it’s a sign you’re a little too invested,” she said. “When we’re doing all the arguing, we are not teaching our kids to advocate for themselves.”

- Stop doing their homework. Enough said.

She urges families to think more broadly about what makes for a “good” college. There are excellent educational experiences to be had at schools that aren’t among U.S. News and World Report’s top 20, she says, and there are schools that will accept students who don’t have a perfect resume.

Parents need to see that even children who succeed in doing the impossible — getting into Stanford, or Harvard, or other elite schools — bear the scars of the admissions arms race.

“They’re breathless,” Lythcott-Haims said. “They’re brittle, they’re old before their time.”

confuzzled dude wrote:

So are you a helicopter parent? Here are some of Lythcott-Haims’s simple tests:

- Check your language. “If you say ‘we’ when you mean your son or your daughter — as in, ‘We’re on the travel soccer team’ — it’s a hint to yourself that you are intertwined in a way that is unhealthy,” Lythcott-Haims said

- Examine your interactions with adults in your child’s life. “If you’re arguing with teachers and principals and coaches and umpires all the time, it’s a sign you’re a little too invested,” she said. “When we’re doing all the arguing, we are not teaching our kids to advocate for themselves.”

- Stop doing their homework. Enough said.

She urges families to think more broadly about what makes for a “good” college. There are excellent educational experiences to be had at schools that aren’t among U.S. News and World Report’s top 20, she says, and there are schools that will accept students who don’t have a perfect resume.

Parents need to see that even children who succeed in doing the impossible — getting into Stanford, or Harvard, or other elite schools — bear the scars of the admissions arms race.

“They’re breathless,” Lythcott-Haims said. “They’re brittle, they’re old before their time.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/education/wp/2015/10/16/former-stanford-dean-explains-why-helicopter-parenting-is-ruining-a-generation-of-children/?tid=pm_pop_b

-> Good pointers, especially to those parents who are obsessed with college rankings.