'Cause they could turn out to be wimps. So says Hara Estroff Marano, an editor at Psychology Today who says we shield our kids from too much which only harms them in the long run. She offers some advice to parents.
One, back off and give kids some credit and some leeway to demonstrate their competence. Two, let kids play freely without monitoring. Three, eat dinner together at least five nights a week: aside from the sense of cohesiveness, it gives all that security that is the breeding ground for success. No matter where you are on the socioeconomic spectrum, it is more correlated with school adjustment and achievement than any other single thing that parents can do.
The whole interview is worth reading. I know I find myself guilty of this at times. The world can be such a horrific place and I want to shield my beautiful daughters from all of the crap. Unfortunately, I or any other parent cannot do that completely. The best we can do is to slowly expose them to it, but educate them about it and guide them and be a rock for them to hold on to during the bad times. God knows it's not easy, but the effort is certainly worth it.
2 comments:
know what you mean. its dang hard...and even harder for dad's with daughters.
now, if we could just get the government to read that study. i mean, at the rate things are going, in another ten years we, as parent's won't hardly have the option of 'not babying our kids'.
America is truly great. We use thousands of tax payer dollars to fund a high-end study to "discover" what common sense has made evident to us already.
Post a Comment