^^^
Did somebody suggest that? lol
I was in a moms of multiples club years ago, Compmom, and the SAH mother of quads had a similar contraption to “walk” her toddlers in. But I’m sure that’s different.
“usually only about 20% had ever cleaned a toilet.”
My daughter wanted to earn some money when she was ten, so I told her that I would give her $5 a week to clean the kitchen and bathroom! Now that she is 14, she is starting to realize that she is not getting paid much for her labors. However, she still does it because she wants the money! 
I agree that this is a life skill that one can learn in one minute. I never did any chores growing up. Amazingly, I have managed to learn how to keep a clean and orderly house. All things in their due course.
I hate ironing. If my kids want ironed clothes, they iron the clothes themselves. My son returned with a suitcase full of clean but VERY wrinkled clothes.
Good honest labor has a certain amount of therapy to it. It can be curative.
Having a lot of work to do might suppress symptoms. I know a person with an anxiety disorder who finds this to be true. This individual has a lot more difficulty with anxiety symptoms during free time than during a busy day at work.
But curative? Is there evidence for that?
Anybody have a record player…might be a bit broken. Laundry? Mishandled socks? 8-|
@jym626 learned optimism: Good things are framed as permanent and pervasive. Bad things, temporary and specific.
I was an undergrad when Learned Helplessness came out, and all the psych profs went gaga over it. Read Learned Optimism as a grad student.
Young people rise to the occasion when warranted. Most college-bound kids in America now lead relatively sheltered lives where the basic questions of survival and coping are not relevant. At a certain point, however, we all face a point where we realize that failure is not an option, and we do what we have to do to make it. This point comes earlier for some than for others. It is empowering, however, to face that test and pass it. Helicopter parenting deprives young people of that empowerment.
My D is privileged, as are we. We have easy and secure lives compared to many. However, in the past year she was in a situation where she had to find her own housing abroad or risk having to return to the US and terminate a program she had tried very hard to access and succeed in. If I could have helped her, I would have swooped right down and done so; but we were powerless. We could not help her; she was on her own in a foreign country. She solved the problem and found her own housing. Frankly I think she learned more from this challenge than she has learned in any of her classes thus far. Now obviously she wasn’t going to starve to death, and she could have returned to the US licking her wounds, but she didn’t want to to that, and she found the strength to avoid that outcome. “There is no limit to what you can do when failure is not an acceptable option.”
Good job, brantly. Though I feel old, as Seligman’s newer theories on happiness and optimism were presented well after I finished grad school.
Folks here seem to be conflating the psychological concept of learned helplessness with dependence or passivity. While it is more like the latter than the former, it isn’t the same as having someone else do things for you and then having to fly by the seat of your pants.
My brother had never done laundry before he went to college. But he know to separate whites from darks and he used bleach with his undies. A LOT of bleach. They became religious underthings… holy tighty whities. Had to replace all of them. This is what in the psychology field is known as one trial learning 
I never was allowed to touch the kitchen but I did learn in college. A roommate taught me how to cook rice without the rice cooker. Basic stuff that I didn’t know.
I don’t know when society is going to stop blaming parents for everything that goes wrong. Most parents try to do the best they know and they can. There are no manuals or yearly refresher courses for parenting. It is a very stressful job that drains you physically, emotionally and financially. Most of the teens and older don’t even listen to their parents.
Another case of blame the mother. I sincerely wish I had half the power that is attributed to me by the media. Imagine what havoc I could cause! However, in my daughter’s case, her depression and anxiety really are her parents’ fault: She had the misfortune to be born into a family with mental illness, including suicide, on both sides.
I’ve come to the conclusion that this is the definition of a helicopter parent - “Anyone who is more involved in their child’s life than I am”.
Helicopter parents do exist. Coincidentally, there appears to be an increased in depression treated at university counseling centers. That does not mean helicopter parents are the cause of their students’ depression. Let’s remove
the designation “helicopter parent” and describe parents who appear to be over-involved with their college-aged students’ lives.
Some college students skip class, don’t turn in papers and assignments on time, earn poor grades, violate college rules, party endlessly, catch the attention of police by speeding, vomiting on the pavement in front of bars, and so on. These examples are not what parents want, but could individually or collectively bring a student to the attention of campus administration and/or campus and local police.
Parental responses are an excellent means of recognizing over-involved parents. I was asked by a handful parents and on multiple occasions if I would awaken a student every morning, maintain a schedule of multiple students and contact them individually (and no leave messages) about test and due dates, contact faculty and administration to “advocate” for students who were failing. not attending class, or found drunk on campus. Some parents asked me to support their calls aka demands to faculty and administration that their students’ behaviors be ignored or forgiven, other wanted forgiveness of poor test grades often coupled with extra time and extra credit,others wanted me to assume responsibility for their students’ behaviors because I had not been vigilant in taking care of their students, and so on. Interestingly, the students themselves expected be bailed out by parents directly or indirectly and did not seem aware that they had a speaking part in the discussions. If you are contacting faculty, administration and/or staff to smooth the way for your students, but provide no evidence that your children have any responsibility for their own behavior. I would consider you a helicopter parent or whatever in the current descriptor of over-involved parents.