My daughters saw me go back to school when they were in grade school. They saw me pack my books and go to our nearby hospital where I studied in the hospital library. They saw me not be able to go to weekend family get togethers sometimes because I had schoolwork to do. They saw me differentiating what needed to be to be inclusive of family life importance but also educational importance. They saw me stand up and give the student speech at my graduation.
But......they also realized that getting my education was a means for our family to finally take a real family vacation to Disneyworld, buy a new vehicle for the first time, move to a bigger, but not fancy house. And they saw that my income would help them get their future education, too.
Now, my daughters are moms and wives, hard working responsible employees, and passionate community citizens. There were no favors, no monetary buy offs in their early days or ever. I would be aghast and mortified if they ever participated in such activity in their futures.
Not only have the nation’s cheaters been immoral, they’ve led their children astray. Along with my daughters learning that hard work and balancing life is what counts and by the way, works best, they are relaying that lifestyle to my grandkids. After all, most times example can be the best lesson.
8
Children need to learn the relationship between responsibility and freedom. I find parents today go overboard with freedom and venture timidly, if at all, into the realm of responsibility. Over the years of raising my own children and having many kids of all ages over to my house, I have been stunned by the lack of training and education in responsibility when it comes to simple table manners, household chores, communicating with adults, respecting the ways of the home. Many kids show up clearly with no clue how to manage without mommy or daddy there to do it all for them. I scratch my head wondering what these parents are thinking...are they planning to have their children live with them forever?
7
Excellent advice every parent should follow! My 9 year old daughter brings me my water without me asking and place it on a pretty coaster next to me when I sit to watch some TV. She always gets me things when I ask her with a good attitude and promptly. Just last week, she made dinner (something simple) for the first time for us her parents, and started making me salads. She gets excellent grades, she is very kind and works hard at school. Some people have told me that I am very lucky she is the way she is.Yet, because she is an only child and has more toys than some of her classmates, and I try to always treat her kindly and with respect, other people think she is spoiled. No: she is not the way she is out of luck: we discipline her when needed. Neither is she spoiled: we just give her a lot of love and assurance that she is just fine the way she is. I also daily, since she was a baby, spend quality time with her, listening to her and trying to follow most of the advice in this article, from validating her feelings to guiding her to find her own solutions. It is daily work and sometimes very difficult, but as my husband and I were eating the dinner she made for us with so much love, everything was worth it.
10
The presumption, without evidence, is that all that snowplowing for rich kids is counterproductive.
I suspect all that money spent on rich kids is not totally going to waste.
5
When my parents and I were visiting one of my cousins, she told the story about when she was 16 she had a job in midtown Manhattan and at lunch break she would go to mass at St. Patrick’s cathedral. One day she saw her grandfather there and thought, ‘what a coincidence.’ My mother, her aunt replied, ‘What makes you think he wasn’t keeping an eye on you?’. She was 16 in 1954.
3
The biggest reason some parents turn into snowplows and wade into illegal short cuts to push their children into a certain college or profession is because they have a chip on their shoulders. Perhaps they did not do as well academically and now wish to garner praise for themselves through their children. If they did well, then perhaps they measured themselves as they were reflected in other peoples eyes, never stopping to actually consider their self worth. Their children would be pushed through the same parental path, for blinded, they know no other.
We as a hyper marketed society need to change. Stop rating colleges. Encourage kids to go to college locally and then later spread their wings to reach out to universities that specialize. This will be economical for families and allow kids to grow slowly and more confidently. And what a boost to local economies and teachers. And slowly perhaps, people will all have a similar common school of origin and the need to brag will drop. As will the financials of coveted private institutions. It will be thrilling to see them fight for good students for a change. And snowplows....why they will only be used to move cold, snow.
5
My 19 year old is 1900 miles away in the Army. The only helicoptering he is getting is in an actual helicopter. That being said, I still wonder if I do too much for him. I have made a deal with him to subsidize his expenses; phone, car insurance, travel, if he saves his pay. I always want him to know he has a safety net, both emotional and practical. I think I want this for him because I never did. I hope have have found a balance of support and independence.
7
@Concerned! Whatever works as an incentive to get him on track to managing his own finances. Although, if he's an unmarried person in the Army, even as an E1 he has all his basics taken care of. He doesn't really need you to subsidize his expenses, and the Army has financial management training classes that he can take to learn about spending, saving, and investment for later use.
6
Sometimes I would say, “Grandma can you do such and such for me?” And sometimes she would reply, “You are big enough and ugly enough to do it yourself.” She was very feminine and a radical feminist also.
2
This is a rehash of Parent Effectiveness Training which was popular in the 60's and 70's. "Active Listening" is reflecting back on what you child says, rather than trying to solve their problem for them.
I'm glad these truths that we learned as young parents are still being used today!
9
I just don't buy it. The real problems we should focus on are the neglect and devaluing of many children--those who go to bed hungry and lack basic necessities. I can't get myself worked up over the spoiled children of the upper middle class.
11
@Josiah
Well, those "spoiled children of the upper middle class" can grow up to be spoiled politicians of the Upper class. Then you might be worked up about it. After all, it did happen once.
5
Can we stop pretending that the parents caught up in the cheating scandal were trying to "protect their kids from every challenge and shield them from any harm?" The only thing these parents were trying to do was ensure that they themselves would be able to brag that their kid got into Yale or some other prestigious school. It wasn't about helping their kids. If that was the case they would have been happy for their kids to go to less prestigious colleges. It's all about the pursuit of prestige and bragging rights. Nothing more.
41
I tried to model my parents' behavior of 'safety net,' yet it became more challenging with my ADHD eldest who was suicidal. The supports of the 504 plan weren't working, additional evaluations and school input resulted in an IEP. I became, and remain, the snowplow parent for the kid, now 19.
Although there's something to be said for setting children up to learn to fail, the 'safety-net' parenting of yore also had a heavy dose of resignation to familial suicide and learning disabilities.
13
@Caledonia
As the mother of a 20-year-old son with ADHD, I totally agree with your comment. Of course, my son isn't suicidal, which complicates your situation exponentially. But he has struggled his entire life with schoolwork, often just giving up and deciding it was too hard to keep trying. If I had taken the advice of people who said I should just back off and let him fail, maybe he would have. Maybe he wouldn't have graduated from high school, and maybe he wouldn't now be at a community college, finally starting to figure out how to study and keep at it until he gets it right.
Advice such as this article offers does not take into account kids who start out with a deficit and need someone to push them until they're ready to push themselves. The kind of pushing these kids require has nothing to do with snowplows. I've been more like the tractor plowing the field but allowing him to plant the seeds and water and fertilize the crops himself. I know my kid. Without the plowing, those seeds would never have gotten planted as they have. And I wasn't willing to take that chance just to prove a point about self-reliance. "Learning to fail" is a great concept for kids who aren't familiar with failure. But for those who are faced with it every day, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
22
Me to my dad circa 1975 (15 yo): Could I please have 2$ to go out with friends?
Dad to me: Earn it.
Me: (Eye roll) Starts vacuuming.
Me with my daughter at her friend’s house circa 2016:
My daughter’s friend to her mom: I need 20$
Her mom: Why?
Her: Mom!!!
Her mom: gets out wallet
My daughter to me: She didn’t have to do anything! Mom!!!....(Eye roll)
I learned well from my dad. Our daughter is well adjusted ( not perfect) and is a full-time college student but still earns her own money. We help her but she is grateful.
13
The only way to learn is to fail slightly less often than you succeed. Sometimes more actually.
5
Recipes for disaster have many ingredients. But the common thread in this ugly brew is status seeking parents with lots of dollars and time on their hands. This scandal won’t change that.
Kids of affluence were better off in the days when parents had six or eight kids; family time was more rationed and children developed a greater sense of independence. It wasn’t by conscious choice, it just happened.
8
What really bugs me is these little delicate angels now seem to think they have some God given right to never be offended. Grow up.
14
Engaging with children to the degree suggested in the article seems like a bad idea. Obviously, empathizing and asking these questions is better than leaping in to solve the kid’s problem, but why are the parents owning the problem to begin with? Parents try to steer their kids through social and academic ups and downs and get way too involved, even when they do everything right. They give their kids a false idea that every problem can be solved with correct actions. That isn’t true! Parents sometimes need to say, “Well, that sucks.” The biggest messes I’ve seen as a middle school teacher for 35 years are caused by parents trying to prevent kids from feeling bad. Kids will feel bad when they have setbacks. If you act like these bad feelings are a tragedy and in need of remediation, kids start feeling worse. It’s hard to separate your emotional life from your child’s, but it’s probably they most vital gift you can give your kid.
36
Sadly, we are in a winner-takes-all culture today, with the one percent gobbling up every penny and opportunity in sight. What's driving snowplow parents is the knowledge that colleges, corporations and country clubs do not want Joe Shmo, his degree from Podunk U, or his plans to lead an ethical, hardworking life. They want Weatherford Smith IX and his degree from Harvard and it does not matter if he has a lick of sense or qualifications because he has connections and money. Joe Shmo's fate is to become "labor" on the balance sheet, a cost that must be kept as low as possible in order to enrich the stockholders. It is terrifying to envision a future for one's child that is bereft of a decent wage, healthcare or pension plan. That's why the parents of America are panicking. Until colleges and employers choose regular, intelligent, low-key folks over uber-polished, tutored, and well-to-do folks with several key (unpaid) internships, nothing will change.
37
Believe me, employers pick intelligent, hard working employees. A company can’t be successful without them. Of course there are always the status newbie hires, but the game is relationships at that point.
For professional degrees, grad school counts more than undergrad. It’s more a meritocracy at that point than resume puffery getting into undergrad.
@historyRepeated Well, sorta! Here's one example of what I am talking about. Two young women graduate with journalism degrees. While looking for a position, one woman racks up work experience doing 2-3 years of unpaid internships. Dad foots the bill for rent, food, clothing so his daughter could get the experience and the "edge." Her competitor has to work like a dog, not doing magazine work, just to make expenses. Which woman will the company hire? Will the second woman be recognized for her hard work and standing on her own two feet? The answer, sadly, is no. The company will almost always choose the first woman, who has a truly unfair advantage.
3
How to raise a self-sufficient child:
When it's time to clean up a mess, there should be no maid, no governess. no mother, and no father doing it - and the kid doesn't get to leave the house or use a cell-phone until the chore is done. IF that child claims to be a prisoner, you say, no - you're just a member of a household and if you're not going to be a responsible one, you don't get all the benefits that come with being a member.
No allowance unless it 's been earned.
Structure that deals with self-sufficiency and actual discovery, socializing, strategy, talent-nurturing, and positive growth - instead of something for the parent to brag about at the water cooler.
And learn to give out compliemnts that encourage positive growth instead of narcissism.
And no being with your siblings at the same table or sofa or bench outside without any interaction.
Learn charades, board games, interacting and increasing your imaginative persuits and creativity with one another. Write a book, be a character in a book, write a play. Play an instrument, play three. Play five. Play. SPONTANEOUSLY!
Why are kids put on a rigid schedule and thrown into an SUV routinely, day in and day out.
They're supposed to be kids.
Put the phones down.
24
Terrific article full of practical advise. Let’s hope it’s widely read!
2
Can we introduce the concept of “safety-net” parenting? Be there to help mitigate serious damage so they can recover from their mistakes or life’s punches.
8
Nice going Boeing.
“They’re critical, and cost almost nothing for the airlines to install,” said Bjorn Fehrm, an analyst at the aviation consultancy Leeham. “Boeing charges for them because it can. But they’re vital for safety.”
Please bring ethics back to your company.
1
Autonomy,competence and relatedness...the three ingredients of happiness. Parents,take note!
5
Make your teenage kids get a job and work for what they want, no matter how wealthy the family is.
This will give then a good foundation to a successful life, and make them much more aware that not everyone has the same advantages they might have.
A part time job during college is a good thing too.
This helps them to prioritize with both time and money.
14
When your husband and his ex are the snowplow and you are a steparent what do you do? His daughter never goes to school on the day of an important test, instead stays home and works all day with a tutor. Then, takes the test and gets an "A", my husband giving him a signed sick excuse. I know she asks others about the test they took which to me is cheating. When I say to my husband all the excuses all the extra help is not growing a responsible adult he tells me to look around everyone is doing it, extra time on tests, tutors etc. In other words the world is tough and to compete you have to play the game. I think the schools of NY also can play a role teaching ethics and strictly applying the rules. The scholarship kids don't have a chance. Your advice is good but the schools need not to help also.
15
Before getting all judgmental, please remember that some kids struggle with invisible neurological differences and require more hand-holding than their age-mates.
People aren't always going to disclose their kids' challenges to you, so it's worth bearing in mind that there may be more to the story than you know.
36
I don't know - the college admissions scandal is ridiculous to be sure, but as the mother of an unmotivated 13 year-old boy I really struggle with how involved to get
I mean I could completely pull back and he could flunk 8th grade and get held back (maybe - he of course is above average in math and reading so he's not a good candidate to repeat 8th grade, but isn't that always the case with these boys *sigh*), but that doesn't seem like the right thing to do, when maybe he just needs to mature some.
But I generally agree that once they hit the teenage years you need to start to pull back because the most important lesson they need to learn is that choices have consequences and they have a lot of control over their future. Definitely feel that on a high level - but oh well off to remind the boy to turn in his homework, again
10
@VJO As the mother of a formerly unmotivated 13 year old boy, I can tell you that what I had learned in 20 years of teaching is that motivation to do well in school (or in anything) has to come from within. After he managed to flunk out of the prep school he was attending his junior year, I finally learned to take my own advice and back off. He transferred to an alternative school, brought his grades up, but not enough to get into any "elite" college. He started at the local community college (his choice since I told him he could choose among 1) full time job, 2) college of some sort or 3) finding all of his belongings in boxes on the sidewalk) and graduated magna cum laude with an associates degree. He followed this with graduation magna cum laude from a ranked university and now owns his own successful company.
32
@
Best response yet. Small setbacks early in life are learning opportunities where parents can give guidance not try to solve the problem
3
I’m glad to see the Parent Effectiveness Training skills we learned in the 1970’s are still relevant. Active listening is still a worthwhile and helpful way to interact with most people including our children.
1
What happens to the kids who are parented by "snow ploys" or "helicopters"? They grow up to believe that their success is entirely their own. I have seen this in my extended family and it is difficult to sit through family dinners with all the bragging.
10
@ScrantonScreamer Not only do THEY believe their success is entirely their own, so do the colleges that accept them and the corporations that hire them. It's a sickening cycle of winner-takes-all.
7
@JCR
Although I hold out hope that those corporations quickly figure it out & give those kids their - probably - 1st real lesson about life.
I ran into many of these kids in the medical program in which I taught. I really wanted to be a fly on the wall when they went for their first job interviews fully expecting to make 100K+, have hours from 9 to 3 so they could take kids to school & afternoons to attend said kids' every event, never have to work weekends or holidays....essentially, they thought they would be the ones dictating to their prospective employers the parameters of the job.
Amazing - and that isn't complimentary.
1
And when these kids, who have never had to manage their own life or never figured out how to deal with adversity, get to their first post college job they do not succeed. All this time and effort to make life successful ends in failure b/c you cannot snowplow or helicopter parent your adult child into their career.
7
"Is this the best I essay I can write? Is this party safe for me?"
I can't tell whether the mistake is a typo or a joke.
Anyway, I feel like good parenting is somewhat intuitive. Either you got it or you don't. You need to control your own emotions obviously. We all have days. However, everything else should feel pretty organic. I'm not sure I have it but I certainly recognize when someone else doesn't have it. We all know "those" parents.
For instance, responding positively when a young child falls. Ha ha instead of oh no. If you need a lecture on when to smile when your kid takes a fall, there's probably not much anyone can do to help you. You are way over thinking things.
Anatomically modern humans have been raising kids for 200,000 years. If a book succeeds where Darwin failed, I will be really, really shocked.
2
For most of human history about 40% of children didn’t survive past age 5.
21
"When your children ask if they have done a household chore correctly. .. . "
Wait. . . what kids are these?!
(and yes, we're a family where everyone does chores)
19
I followed the advice of my undergraduate psychology professor at Brown and let my daughter "chose her own path towards meaning and inner-resilience." After dropping out of Choate her senior year she is finally getting her GED and is in the running to be a shift manager at Chipolte.
6
@Ananda And how are you both with this result? Is she happy with her choice to drop out? I’m struggling with when is parent direction/support valuable and when is it time to let go of the string?
2
Rich!
You say that as if it’s a bad thing. The world needs shift managers at Chipotle more than it needs another Ivanka Trump (to name but one Choate grad).
9
Sounds like some great advice here, though I do think about the individual differences among children. Some of the author’s advice might not be wise for some children.
I also wish the author could’ve avoided the strawman fallacy. Shielding our children from “every problem,” “every challenge,” and “any harm” would probably be bad, as the author says, and would also probably be physically impossible. I’m concerned that exaggerating the problem makes it easier to criticize and gives the illusion of making a credible argument against more reasonable parental practices that try to protect children from “some” harm. The academic cheating is of course not a reasonable parental practice.
8
@drs there are occasions where a parent simply has to step in -- hopefully rare.
1
Resist the urge to get kids a phone for as long as possible. Phones for younger kids reinforce the idea that mom or dad can be called upon and available in a minute to address the simplest of problems. Without a phone during the school day, kids have to face regular problems, without parental interference, in a moderately safe environment of the school. Facing these normal problems builds kids' confidence in being able to handle challenges without immediately turning to the phone.
48
@Cecilia S. I wish schools would ban, at least, smart phones for junior high and lower grades.
18
@Cecilia S. - this would be great, except increasingly schools incorporate smartphones and tablets into the lesson. My kids are in middle school in a wealthy high performing district and every child gets free ipad and are expected to upload assignments and communicate with the teacher that way. My youngest son who hated video games and loved Legos and drawing - really struggled with figuring that stuff out at first. It's just hard. I call it the major struggle of the Gen X parent
3
I teach 8th grade. When our school administrator has to collect a student's phone (after multiple warnings from the teacher) more often than not the parent who comes to retrieve it is usually outraged and incensed that the phone has been taken from their child. They are not the least bit concerned about the child using the phone during class, as they themselves are also obsessed with their phones.
22
Even if one has raised children to become self sufficient adults, our economy makes it doubly difficult, particularly if the adult in question has a disability. Unemployment and under - employment of adults with disabilities is rampant. The Office of Vocational Rehabilitation, which used to be able to creatively help, is now grossly under funded and its employees spend a lot of time juggling large caseloads and having to turn down requests that they could once meet. It's a cruel world out there.
13
Parents wish they could relive their lives through their children. Some children do want to go to an elite college, but most don’t.
It makes much more sense to send the kids to excellent schools (not elite or Ivy League) and, should the children desire, they can on their own into getting into graduate elite school.
3
Children need to learn independence. They need to be able to make their own decisions, regardless of whether or not they fail. Failure is part of the growth process. These days parents are too afraid to allow their children to make mistakes.
As the only parent to my children, they learned how important self reliance is. My daughter managed the entire college application process on her own. My contribution was the money needed for fees. She completed scholarship applications & received several excellent scholarships along with 4 yrs tuition, room/board, books at UPenn. She knew from starting HS she wanted a career in medicine & planned accordingly. I'm proud to say she'll be graduating in a year from UCSF with plans to be a surgeon (and some hefty school loans.) She has every intention of paying it forward once she's making money.
My son chose a different path with equal success. Starting as an advanced life support Paramedic, he became a State Trooper/Flight Paramedic. After deciding he wanted to fly helicopters, joined the military. Today he's a military pilot instructor and back in school for his Master's.
Allow children to grow & learn. Mistakes are important learning tools. Be supportive & loving without smothering. Most importantly allow them to choose their own pathways.
28
The sum of my father’s advice? ‘You’re a smart girl. Figure it out.’ It became a lifelong affirmation that got me through decades of difficulties large and small. And stays with me now that he’s gone.
90
Our dad must have known each other. Mine said the same thing. And, I did (as did my two sisters).
13
@Indiana Joan my father always said “a strong, smart girl can do whatever she wants.” And I can, and I do. Love you Dad.
14
I never considered the values I tried to instill in my kids as tactics to succeed in college entrance.
Nor did I view the the athletic, intellectual, and recreational pursuits the kids were interested in as ramps to college admissions. Or the upscale town we lived in.
Yet all are correlated with elite university experiences.
We urged them to go for it and pursue excellence - whatever they liked.
My kids were Ivy League multi-generational legacies: my wife and both her parents with undergraduate degrees and myself as graduate training - yet both - despite being brilliant, hard working and having the HS grades and SAT scores to qualify, especially my daughter who was a State level all star and D1 soccer recruit - did not get accepted in the Ivies.
No big deal.
Yes, they were disappointed - as were their parents - but things worked out very well, with both attending even more elite globally recognized institutions and academic programs and pursing advanced degrees (son PhD from Johns Hopkins).
Both kids had the resources to respond to the disappointment and move on and make things better.
The Ivy League os over-rated and parents need to get a life and stop living through their kids.
29
The author did not mention a common stumbling block for parents; the difficulty of tolerating their child's frustration, sadness, anger or other challenging emotions. This starts as early as infancy, and doesn't really get easier as they grow older. It can be very difficult to witness a child struggling, and very easy to jump in and offer a solution that turns that frown into a smile.
Being able to tolerate your own intense and uncomfortable feelings is essential in order to follow the author's strategies of modeling, coaching, and supporting a child to build their own tolerance and resources.
102
I take it that there are people who dole out this kind of advice for a living, and are invested in being helpful and correct. I must say that I had a bit of a struggle making it through this undoubtedly well-meant homily. Answering a question with a question seems kinda passive-aggressive to me, a form of, "Scram kid, I don't have time for this now," but in an annoyingly nice tone. I'm glad my parents, far from perfect as they were, had neither the time nor the inclination to read this kind of twaddle.
24
Did the writer and editor miss this sentence, which seems patently incorrect and undermines the point of the article:" Instead of worrying so much about setting our children up to succeed, what if we spent at least as much time setting them up to fail?"
No one is suggesting that parents "set their child up to fail." That's not right. Instead, isn't the point to permit children to fail but to learn how to cope and to adapt and grow.
I don't get this sentence and i bet I'm not alone.
14
@Mark F I took that line to mean building your child's resilience so they know that it's not the end of the world if and when they do fail. You want your child to always know that they have your unconditional love but also that part of life is facing obstacles that will sometimes knock them down. And that's okay.
12
@Mark F
she's suggesting that children learn more from failing at something and recovering than from succeeding at something
11
@Mark F Snowplow parents inevitably set their kids up for failure exactly by setting everything up for their success because they do everything for their kid and don't allow for their input. These parents don't understand that thinking for their kid is not the same thing as thinking about them.
By [purposely] "setting them up to fail" the author meant that parents should allow their kid to make mistakes and then learn from them. Mistakes/failures are part of life and not learning to cope with the consequences can lead to more desperate actions leading to repeating the same mistakes and never understanding where they went wrong. Critical thinking is also a big part of what they learn when they are encouraged to make mistakes.
8
Be a moral, ethical person. At the heart of snowplow parenting are parents who encourage their children to cheat by claiming credit (like Trump) for things they did not do. If your parents wrote your essay, you have no right to claim the work as your own. The child who does that deserves a zero for the work they did not do but passed in as theirs. It would be a bitter lesson, but a good one. We are responsible for our own actions and for the actions we claim as ours but are not.
Ethics, folks. Teach your children to be responsible and compassionate with others. The rest will follow.
36
The danger here is reaction and counter reaction. For example the idea that advice is not a wise idea is questionable. In fact just a moment’s reflection makes it clear that this article itself is nothing more than advice... For parents. So to claim that parents are in need of advice but their offspring are so entirely wise, mature, and far-sighted as to need no advice really makes little sense. Having said that, there is of course such a thing as too much advice. Or bad advice. And such a thing as resistance to good advice. We all need some balance in these matters. That’s my advice!
22
@David Rosen
I like the way you think! ! I found the article overwhelming in its advicey-ness. Now that I’ve read your reaction I will take it to heart when talking to my children— lots of listening, some advice, stop when it looks like they’re not taking it in.
There's a lot of good stuff here, and we should all broach this with humility.
As a parent, I'm really good at agency. My kids walked to school at a young age and are productive wage earners at 16. They know how to be on time and get their homework done.
But I give waaayyy to much advice. I need to get much better at not giving so much guidance or doing the annoying "when I was a kid...". Even when I'm doing my best to listen I try to put everything in context for my kids. I know I need to lighten up. I am way out front of my kids on the college front - already making lists and considering various scouting trips. I'll really need to pull back.
39
@Cousy
However there is still a lot to be said for functional parents living the principle of
"I've got your back", as you do.
Horses for courses as others have written, for some children, your methods build confidence and agency , as you say. Thank you and well done.
Many of us would have loved to have a mother like you.
3
While empathizing is very important, expressions of sympathy and empathy do not make up for the lack of cognitive information or tools possessed by children. Creating your own solution as a child without the establishment of guidelines or the understanding of consequences is what leads to disaster. Some disasters are more disastrous than others. Intelligence is the ability to rapidly apply previously acquired information to a new situation. Failing to provide advice is not only stupid it is morally wrong. "Should I touch the stove?" is not a question that should bring the response "How do you feel about it?" People often confuse advice with directives. Directing your child's life, as "snowplow" parenting is, is not the answer, but providing advice about how to determine the best outcome is. We can chose our actions, but we cannot choose the consequences. The advantage adults have is an additional depth and breadth of experience that comes in the 20 plus years since we made similar life choices. If we let children make up their own answers in math, we would never accomplish anything. Social choices are much more mathematically provable in outcome than many would like to admit.
23
@Eddie
Whoah: Nowhere did the author suggest abandoning parental oversight of safety isues.
Reading between the lines, for gist as well as verbatim, the takeaway is use your head, let the kid “own” their feelings and actions, and be developmentally appropriate with your suggestions. Which means you really have to know and accept your kid, not your fantasy of what you want them to be.
One of the most overwhelming epiphanies I had as a parent is that you can offer up all your experience in the world, but they still have to learn and “own” the experiences themselves. That’s where discipline and modelling come in - including admiiting you can be wrong and modelling apology and making it right.
Act like an experienced, loving, thinking grownup, in other words.
17
@Eddie Parents are often too quick to provide answers to their children's problems; I think this is the advice we're talking about here.
A thoughtful parent can help a child through the child's own process of 1) coming up with options, 2) weighing them, and 3) rejecting those that are dangerous. The hardest part is probably that your child may choose an option that you wouldn't have chosen for them; as a responsible parent, you need to find the line of allowing them to make some of their own mistakes while at the same time providing a guard rail based on your own adult wisdom.
9
I'm glad I was born in 1953, (Do I hear a big clock ticking?) when "helicopter" and "snowplow" were just helicopters and snowplows. I'm also happy for my children that I was born in 1953. They same to have come out OK .
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My friend, a teacher and single mom, did a great job of not being a snowplow parent. I still remember that her 2 sons, even when small, were tasked with picking out their friends’ birthday gifts. When I got married, they were in their late teens, and my friend told them it was their responsibility to reply and to buy a gift.
In contrast, my nephew of the same age was unable to attend, and his response card had been completed by his mother.
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Thank goodness for our wonderful Montessori preschool. One philosophy that I learned while my children were there that I use almost daily is, “do not do for your children what they can do for themselves.” When children are able to do things for themselves, it increases their self-belief, self-confidence, self-reliance and self-esteem. Start in preschool and your urge or need to “snowplow” for these children will be greatly reduced.
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Montessori is wonderful. Wish it was available to all especially preschoolers.
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Grow up poor-that teaches the child how to survive. Period. The best motivator I ever had. Period. I have friends whose mommy's protected them from the big bad world. Now, they are toast, won't go into their afflictions. I have a huge amount of empathy for those kids growing up in bad neighborhoods with no parental guidance.
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@one percenter In other words, if your child is not born poor, she is toast.
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@one percenter
Growing up poor only makes it harder not to grow up poor.
I grew up in a Third World country. My parents weren’t poor, but what really made me study was look at the poverty that surrounded me. It alone convinced me that I had to study. No parenting required.
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Usually it’s the other way around.
The answer is simple: have a sense of moral integrity.
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@kathpsyche And the problem is obvious: Trump thinks he has moral integrity.
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“Parents wonder why the streams are bitter, when they themselves have poisoned the fountain.” — John Locke
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The desire to go to an elite college often belongs to the parent. It gives the parent bragging rights in their friends group. Many parents feel it certifies them as a good parent. Many movies about a troubled teen resolves by the kid going off to a brand name college. What do kids want? Hard to tell because they’ve been brainwashed since birth, even wearing Harvard sweatshirts to preschool. My guess is that kids want fun and the love of family and friends rather than a four-year Odyssey to receive a branded diploma.
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@Rick That's right. Many of my daughter's friends partied almost every day of high school. They were often too hungover to show up for school. Three of them almost didn't graduate because they didn't have enough hours at school to qualify for graduation, based on NJ law. That's what my daughter wanted as well. I am friends with their parents and many of them feel that they are great parents for letting their kids do what they want.
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My 19YO daughter was offered a job managing horses for a winter - bare minimum wage + housing, not the sort of job that will work as a career, but she thought it was her dream job. I bit my tongue, she took the job, and by the end of the winter she realized it was boring, she didn’t really have enough to live on (I did not subsidize her), and she was over it, and went on to college. Sometimes the hardest thing to do is to sit on your hands and bite your tongue. But sometimes the kids have to learn something by living through it and finding out. And those experiences become huge growth points.
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@Deborah Grosner
I'll remember this story and try to learn from it.
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@Deborah Grosner
The way you raised your daughter closely resembles the blueprint of my mother.
Often times I knew she bit her tongue when I wanted to do something she thought was a bad idea. All she ever said to me with a warming, comforting smile was "You will always have a home to come back to with the front door open as well as my arms welcoming you back."
I made plenty of mistakes but always felt that emotional safety net of my mother's love. She gave me room to grow, to learn, to test my own limits, abilities and to fail. And the best part is never once did she ever say "I told you so" when something didn't work out. She knew I knew I had made a mistake. She told me later on that there was nothing she could ever say that could make me feel worse than I already did.
The best advise my mother gave me was no advise at all. She helped me come to my own conclusions and remedies for results.
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@Marge Keller
You are one lucky woman.
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As the parent of one sophomore in HS and one sophomore in college, this piece appears to be aimed at the parents of elementary school kids - which aren't the problem here. The problem is parents who snowplowed their kids into college. In fact, my older daughter was waitlisted at two of the institutions involved in this scandal. Will we ever know if she would have had a spot if I had an extra 15K laying around? No. We won't. But handling the problems and problem solving issues with teens so much more nuanced than "I could tell a teacher".
My younger daughter had a situation recently where she became aware of a friend's suicidal intentions. She convinced her friend to trust her enough to walk with her and as they walked and talked, she walked and talked the student to the counselor's office at her high school. Talking her through her decisions afterwards, when she felt as if she may have betrayed this friend by bringing him to the counselor, is so much more nuanced than "let your child have the idea."
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The same parents who snowplowed their kids into college have snowplowed them from birth. This article is about not doing either.
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I think it's a great idea to follow up last week number one most read piece on snowplowed parents with a how-to overview. In our house, we do ask - in the face of a problem large or small - what our child thinks he should do about it. But the idea that after completing a chore he should ask: was that okay or did I do it right? The child should judge if the task was completed satisfactorily or not. THAT builds confidence - not looking for constant approval on whether the floor was vacuumed correctly or dishwasher was emptied the right way (if the dishes aren't broken and we can find everything-it's perfect!) Once in a while, our child will say - out of the blue - "when I did it this way it was better." Then I'll remark- that's good you learned from that. There won't be constant feedback on basic tasks after they go to college and they're living on their own. They have to develop their own internal judgment about what works and what does not.
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At our son’s primary school, huge numbers of children get learning support, extra time on tests and exemptions from homework because of mild and common difficulties with attention and anxiety. We don’t feel our son needs special treatment, but this does put him at a disadvantage relative to his “special” peers. Where is the line between learning support and snow plowing?
It’s very easy to condemn snowplow parents, but it’s a case of keeping up in the competitive world. This article assumes (with no evidence) that the children of snowplow parents have worse outcomes than other children. Anecdotally, I would say the opposite is true - children with snowplow parents do better and go farther. One of those children is the president of the United States!
I suggest that before we celebrate yet another finger wagging article about bad parenting, we take an honest and self-reflective look at the decisions we each make that shape our world.
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When you say the other kids get extra time and learning support because of “mild” anxiety or learning differences, you dismiss it as an unfair advantage. Behind the scenes are years of pain and angst for the kids and families. The help is finally given after years of struggles, countless meetings with teachers and professionals to identify the problems, then extensive testing to document and prescribe classroom support for the child.
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@Sarah Conner as a child who grew up with a very serious learning disability, I was often judged along with my mother for the extra time or resources I was given. My mother would be considered a snow plow parent by these standards, in the mean time I turned into a very self reliant adult. Thank you for bringing attention to children with disabilities, it's not all as black and white as everyone would like to make it seem.
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@Ash Ranpura
Anything worth doing for people, there will be a few people taking advantage. Do you really think kids who need support not get it because there are people working the system?
And in my experience, the people who complain the loudest about those people are the first ones to pitch a fit if something doesn’t go their kid’s way.
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Good parenting advice, but following it has nothing whatever to do with cheating to get into college, or, more likely, cheating, period. It’s important to raise children who are confident in their own abilities to work through problems, but confidence and the success that comes with it can just as easily be used to game the system as improve it. Think of all those highly successful politicians who graduated from elite schools who were caught cheating on their wives. Imagine the number who weren’t caught. So, by all means encourage confidence and independence, but don’t stop there. Model a commitment to justice, and help children to see past their self-interest when it motivates them treat others unfairly.
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@Richard Frank
This is an important piece:
“Model a commitment to justice, and help children to see past their self-interest when it motivates them treat others unfairly.”
Speak up when human rights are violated.
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Absolutely right. Asking thoughtful questions about their take on a situation and how they think they should handle it is my ideal but kids are not blank slates.
Some are naturally more mature and thoughtful at a younger age. Some more anxious or socially awkward. Some have real learning challenges.
You're always working towards competent self-sufficiency but the strategies and timing can vary widely even within the same family. And the world is not kind to the 'late bloomer'. If only the day to day were so practical and straight forward.
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Listening and coaching is great, but advice seems like a good idea too.
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@s. Advice can definitely have its place, especially in more serious situations where the kid may not see the full picture. However, it's great to teach kids how to ask for advice and then weigh its merits.
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Rachel's practical advice is so smart. Her books are amazing, too!
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