I recently heard about a trend that employers are now offering “parent packs” to potential new hires at college recruitment fairs and actually inviting parents into their adult child’s job interviews to help negotiate salary and benefits.  I literally laughed when I heard this, but I looked it up and it’s true!  The thought of a 22 year old college graduate needing his mommy to negotiate his salary is hysterical to me.  But what’s not so funny, is that the more I talk to kids from the millennial generation (kids born between 1982 and 2000), the less shocked they are about these kinds of norms.  One college student I spoke with, who thought the idea of mom’s coming to their kid’s interview was only “kinda funny,” confessed that her mother had completed her college application for her.  If you can’t fill out your own college application, are you really prepared for college?  Is this what an adult looks like in 2010?

I’ve talked to college professors who admit that the “helicopter parent” is a factor in their grading policies.  It still shocks me to imagine a parent threatening a college professor to extend a second (or third or fourth) chance or give extra points because their kid needs a certain GPA to get into law school.  How is this o.k.?  What’s wrong with your kid that he or she can’t negotiate extra credit for themselves?  Not to mention the lack of accountability you are condoning.  What have you done?  How is this kid going to make it without you?  Or is that what you’re afraid of?

It’s time to cut the Kiddie Kord, to mention what I consider an iconic product for overprotective parents.  The child leash is actually a pretty tame example.  Consider SiliPads, silicone-filled knee pads . . . for babies.  How have we all made it this far?  How were we even able to advance to walking without protecting our chubby toddler knees from scrapes and scratches?  I’m poking fun here, but this must be where it all starts.  We don’t ever want our children to ever feel any discomfort, or struggle at all if we can swoop in and alleviate the inconvenience.  The truth is, by protecting the child from upset or discomfort, we are crippling them emotionally.  How are they ever going to learn to manage disappointment when you aren’t there to distract them from it?  In attempts to save the child’s self-esteem, the anxious parent fosters fragility, and a dependence that the child will soon enough realize he or she is incompetent without, which is where the real damage to their self-esteem will emerge.

The real problems occur when we can’t let kids do things for themselves.  Where does self-esteem come from?  It comes from allowing kids to fail and then encouraging them to try again.  And once they obtain competence in a given task, they develop a natural satisfaction from their achievement, or self-esteem.  If you’re always there hovering and saving them from failure, they will never get it.  Kids need to experience pain and to struggle sometimes.  Without struggle they lack opportunities to cope with normal stresses and to develop resilience.  Without coping skills, kids develop anxiety.  In the 1980‘s and early 1990’s the majority of problems college students were facing when they sought counseling were relationships.  Developmentally, this is pretty normal.  In 1996, and up until now, the main issue was anxiety.  So many kids don’t know how to manage normal stress and when it arises they have mom on speed dial to coax them through whatever pickle they’ve gotten themselves into, or worse, bail them out.

I get the feeling that there is something else going on.  Is it me or is every single kid an honor student these days?  Of course parents are naturally biased toward their own children.  I get it.  But how are you really measuring their success?  Just because you have the bumper sticker doesn’t mean every single child is a genius.  So this willful delusion seems to cause some parents to turn a blind eye to their child’s true skill sets and when they cannot make the cheerleading squad on their own, enter hairsprayed soccer mom from hell marching herself to the principals office to have words with the coach.  Now consider what the child learns in this scenario.  “I can’t do it without mom.  I’m no good on my own.”  Later, when the other girls on the squad chastise her limited physical abilities, she turns to something she can control, like cutting or sexual promiscuity.  Depression is right around the corner if it hasn’t already taken hold.

Child safety laws have come a long way since I was a kid.  My mother brought me home from the hospital in her arms, not in a car seat.  She took my temperature with a glass, mercury-filled thermometer.  Mercury!  As a kid, I never owned a bike helmet and my playgrounds weren’t covered with rubber flooring.  Were my parents grossly irresponsible?  I don’t disagree with the advancements, not at all.  I think were getting smarter about child rearing on the whole.  But there’s a line.  These days, you can’t trust your kid to walk down the street without worrying they’ll get picked up by a child molester.  Were there as many child molesters when I was a kid?  The truth is, you have a significantly higher risk of having your kid molested by taking them to a relative’s home for Thanksgiving than you do having them picked up by a stranger.  The data indicates that 80% of sexual child abuse happens in the home of the child or a relative.  Keep your eye on Uncle Frank.

This brings me to the issue of germs.  If you never expose your kid to germs, they cannot develop a healthy immune system.  I’m not saying they should remain filthy, but hand sanitizer is now a staple in the average parent tool kit, and anxious parents are quick on the draw the second little Sally picks something up off the ground.  Kids are going to get dirty, especially when they play. 

Oh, and let them play!  I read that over 40,000 schools have eliminated recess from their curriculum to make room for testing preparation.  And the playtime that they do offer are adjudicated by adults to referee any difficulties that may arise in the natural world of play.  Again, increasing the child’s dependence on an adult to tell them what is fair or what they should do in every given circumstance.  Natural leadership is squelched under these conditions.  Kids learn so much when they play freely among their peers.  There has been an increased focus on intellectual tools for kids to sharpen their cognitive prowess, the Georgia state-mandated Build Your Baby’s Brain Through the Power of Music CD that was sent home with every newborn comes to mind, but their real opportunities are developed during playtime, where they learn self-control, interpersonal effectiveness, and begin to develop their own identity.  Removing or limiting plays creates a developmental delay.  Don’t believe me?  In a study measuring benchmarks for adulthood, in 2000 only 31% of males had reached psychological adulthood by the age of 30.  And females it was 46%.  You girls have always been way ahead of us dudes.

So, how do you raise a wimp?  Don’t let them fail.  Don’t let them play freely.  Don’t let them struggle with making tough decisions on their own.  Go out of your way, use your influence, your affluence, even cheat the system, to make special accommodations for their academic success.  Tell yourself (and everyone else) that your child is exceptionally gifted and do everything in your power to maintain that delusion.  And when they’re off to college, make sure your number is programmed into their cell phone, which of course you pay for, and be sure to panic when she skips a day from checking in.  Make sure you make her feel guilty for not returning calls promptly, too, so that she really understands how incompetent she is without you.