I just finished reading a fascinating article in the Atlantic magazine titled "How to Land Your Kid in Therapy". It was written by a psychologist after witnessing an increasing trend in her private practice, young adults in their 20's to early 30's seeking therapy because they are not "happy". Previously, these young adults would have had some issues with parents when they were younger, either living with a single parent, not receiving enough love or attention, or dealing with some other issue from their youth. However, the new trend was puzzling to the author because these young adults came from perfect families where their parents loved them unconditionally and they felt like their parents were their best friends. In essence they came from families that continuously sought to ensure their children were always happy. This is proving to be a problem. I know, how can ensuring you children are happy all the time be a bad thing? Well, after reading this article, it makes complete sense. These young adults, perfectly happy as children, were essentially unprepared for the real world that is not continuously uplifting and full of happiness all the time. By the parents keeping their children happy all the time, they robbed them of the real world experience and feelings of dissatisfaction, unpleasantness, and pain. Too many parents these days can be seen attending to their children the second they get hurt, or compromising on promises made to their children just so that they are happy, or even re-arranging their schedule constantly to make sure their children can do everything they want to do. Their treatment of their children is in no way based in reality. Contrarily, instead of creating happy adults, they are creating narcissistic individuals who are totally self-absorbed, have a skewed view of themselves, and feel the whole world should bend to their wishes (after all, that's what their childhood was like). In the end, by ensuring continual happiness for our children, we are essentially sentencing them to the therapists couch when they get older.
The article goes into much more detail than I just did about raising children with too much focus on the children. I heard it put very well from a gentleman that I talked to the other day. He said that children fit into your life. They get accustomed to your daily routine, and they essentially mold themselves to your life. It is not the job of parents to re-arrange their whole lives to accommodate a child, rather, the child needs to fit into the parents' life. After all, a child is usually in the house for only 18 years before heading off to college, a little longer if they are studying closer to home, but 18 years is only 22% of our lives if we live to 80 years old. So after the children are gone, what do parents do if they have re-arranged their lives around a child and then there is no child? I think that parents need to realize that children do need love, they do need support, but they also need to be able to figure things out for themselves. Parents are not meant to be the best friends of their children. Children should absolutely hate their parents from time to time whether it be from a punishment they received or simply for making them follow the rules. It is absurd that children these days get away with so much. They have come to feel entitled rather than privileged. They feel the deserve the latest toy on the market, ice cream every day, or to have a say in the dynamics of the household. Allowing children to have this much freedom when they are younger inherently dooms them later on. The article at one point talks about a growing number of children at college who are being referred to as "teacups". The moment something goes wrong, anything, they break down and don't know how to handle it. Without mommy and daddy their to pick them up, they can't figure out how to deal with issues on their own.
To me this trend is quite disturbing. If this trend grows, and "helicopter" parents are on the increase, then we will essentially be creating a generation of indecisive, self-entitled brats who do not know how to cope in the real world. Children need to be able to fall down, skin their knee, and figure out what went wrong before being attended to by their parents. This is not to say that parents should just let their children suffer ad infinitum, but there is a middle that needs to be found between immediate attention and complete abandonment. Parents can not hover over their kids continuously and completely forsake their own life. Children need to be able to learn and we are preventing them from doing that. One surprising discovery in the article came with the amount of choices parents present to children. A group of children were given three crayons to draw a picture with while another group was given 24 crayons to draw with. Once completed, the pictures were given to judges with no knowledge of who had how many crayons to choose from. The group that had only 3 crayons created remarkably better pictures than the group with 24. This shows that if we provide too many choices to children, they become more indecisive in the long run. Why do parents feel the need to provide their children with every possible toy? Fewer toys will be better for them in the long run. If you are a parent, how do you raise your children? Are you one of the parents who feels the need to ensure continuous happiness for your children? If so, you might want to check out the full article linked up here and maybe keep your child out of therapy later on. For me, when I become a parent, I know that I will do my best to keep my child out of therapy. It may be hard seeing my child in pain at times, but pain is part of life, along with unpleasantness, dissatisfaction, and suffering. If children do not learn these things early on, they will be in for a rude awakening when they grow older.
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