Attempts by parents to micromanage their children’s lives and resolve problems for them is ruining a generation of young adults, according to a former Stanford University dean.
Julie Lythcott-Haims noticed during her decade in charge of new arrivals that although her incoming students were brilliant on paper, in practice they proved less and less able to take care of themselves every year.
Many were “brittle . . . old before their time”, a fact she attributed to so-called helicopter parenting. In her new book How To Raise an Adult, she argues that “overhelping” children — typically out of a sincere desire to do the best for them — robbed them of the chance to learn about who they are, what they personally love and how to fail and learn from mistakes and disappointments.
“We want so badly to help them by shepherding them from milestone to milestone and by shielding them from failure and pain. But overhelping causes harm,” she writes.
“It can leave young adults without the strengths of skill, will, character that are needed to know themselves and to craft a life.” Ms Lythcott-Haims’ book is the latest addition to a flurry of recent literature addressing the stresses and struggles of teenagers, students and young professionals.
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She urges parents to retreat. “Our job as a parent is to put ourselves out of a job,” she says. “We need to know that our children have the wherewithal to get up in the morning and take care of themselves.”
Giving children chores, forcing them to do their own homework and leaving them to argue their own cases occasionally in disagreements with teachers were all ways she suggested to boost self-reliance.