Bad policy and paranoid parenting are making kids too safe to succeed.
By: Lenore Skenazy and Jonathan Haidt
In: Reason, December 2017
Summary
- Key claim: kids are over-protected and under-prepared.
- We raise kids unaccustomed to facing anything on their own, including risk, failure, and hurt feelings.
- Kids develop less (emotional and physical) resiliency.
- The typical (developed world) childhood has changed.
- Shifts in parenting norms, new academic expectations, increased regulation, technological advances, and heightened parental fears.
- Over-protection of kids is the norm.
- Leads to more fragile, sensitive and dependent kids.
- Causes moral dependency …
- Kids seek out authority figures to help them solve their problems and to shield them from discomfort.
- … and less flexibility and open-mindedness.
- Hyper-sensitive kids.
- Driven by parents’ excessive fears.
- Underlying belief: anytime kids are doing anything on their own, they are automatically under threat.
- The world probably has gotten safer.
- Kids need to learn by doing.
- Physically, but also mentally.
- Need to experience failure and realize you can survive it.
- Need to develop emotional resilience.
- Kids need free play.
- Children decide what to do and how to do it.
- Training for adulthood
- Learn to make friends, overcome fears, solve problems and generally take control.
- Promote development of intellectual, physical, and emotional resilience.
- Website: Letgrow.org