<p>As a School Psychologist for 27 years, my observations are as follows: Mothers have a strong instinct to protect their children, especially their sons. Their instinct is to shield them from anything that causes them discomfort, unhappiness, or anxiety. Of course like everything else it occurs in different degrees of intensity. When intense we refer to it as “son worship” . It is much more prevelent today because of the increased number of fatherless households, & fathers who don’t take parenting as their #1 priority. Fathers tend to balance mothers, especially with sons. In previous generations mothers were much more likely to defer to the father in matters of dealing with parenting sons. It is difficult to see your child struggle or even fail. However failure & anxiety are inevitable, to artifically shield them from this does not prepare them for life.</p>
<p>I think there are many pathways to being resilient. You can seem like a pampered spoiled kid on the surface, but later on come up to the challenge before you. Growing up in a high tension household works against resilience (because you’re expending so much energy tensed for the next emotional or physical blow) but it doesn’t preclude it all together. Growing up in a home where everything is given to you doesn’t encourage resilience, but it doesn’t eliminate it either.</p>
<p>Ideally, our kids would feel loved and cherished but not be spoiled. They’d get the right amount of adversity and be appropriately challenged instead of dumped out of a moving car. But even if the recipe is flawed, it isn’t a souffle. Kids mature and do ok in life given a lot of different starts.</p>
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<p>I would like to point out that we’ve been at war for a decade. I lost my brother-in-law in the war when I was in 7th grade. I’m now a rising senior in college. Just to put that in perspective. And IIRC, those in Vietnam didn’t quite come out unscathed. I wouldn’t say our vets today are any less equipped to deal with life than those who came back from Vietnam. </p>
<p>Also, the vast, vast majority of teenagers get over break-ups and other life events just fine. But in the age of the internet, those who take these things badly (and there have ALWAYS been those people), are able to rant about it in a much more public way. </p>
<p>With that said, I do think many parents are far too over-protective. It’s made worse by the myth that the world outside your doors is dangerous. However, I think most teens and older are just fine.</p>
<p>Kids can handle much more than we did at their age. They also produce lots of complaining and this is a good sign that they still trust us and seek our support. I love this part a lot, lots, lots. I will feel very sad when it stops and eventually it will. As one example, I have learned many months after the fact that my DIL was gravely ill in a hospital because docs administered some meds that she was greatly allergic to. Yes, we almost lost her, but my S. did not mentioned it to us at all. Maybe he felt that he should not put this on our sholders, especially becuase we are so far away. I really would have preferred to have a chance to talk to my S. when he had such a hard time. But I was completely unaware of whole situation.<br>
Appreciate all complaints that come your way. I want to feel down when my kids are down, I feel that feeling down together is somehow easier. I want to be a parent even when kids are in their fifth decade. That what family is for.</p>
<p>People either rise to a challenge and succeed or fail. Both are equally important life lessons. If we never allow our kids to fail or feel pressured we have done them a disservice. You can empathy or feel “down” when your kids face adversity or are disappointed or whatever but that is different from seizing and solving their problems.</p>
<p>No failure is allowed, period… here. Not even part of family vocabulary, not mentioned ever…not discussed, not predicted, no plans for failure. Plan and go for it, this is the only way known to us. If events call for adjustment, then adjust and still go for it. If did not get into #1, then #2 is NOT a failure, it is a great opportunity. There are no failures, there are great opportunites to learn from your mistakes. If one feel that he/she failed, then they will never learn. They had a lesson, it was not a failure.</p>
<p>Sometimes I worry because DS has not had a teribly hard life, especially compared to hi parents. He has never known hunger, abuse, shame. I worry about when the real world will hit him, but then realize that he has the tools. He also has the support if it gets to be too much. We often come on here and allow ourselves the luxury to make mountains out of molehills, to express our doubts and concerns. We fight over postage, for goodness sake. that is what CC is for. </p>
<p>We are raising our kids together and have the luxury to vent here in a way that our parents did not or could not vent to their friends.</p>
<p>It’s so hard to compare generations. This one has grown up with the Internet, awareness and open discussion of mental illness, less emphasis on manners, and, in some cases, helicopter parenting. Former generations grew up “toughing it out”. In most situations, that was probably for the best. (My children get told to “tough it out” right much!)</p>
<p>What about situations where “toughing it out” didn’t work? There were MANY of those situations in former generations. We can’t say that the suicide rate was less then, because suicides were not talked about and often, if not usually, covered up by police and doctors who were sympathetic to the families involved. As for the other “weaker” members of society: People who were physically weaker were less likely to survive childhood. Many people with physical disabilities, developmental disabilities, mental illnesses, or just tenuous coping skills were put away in institutions or kept hidden at home, often medicated heavily. Autism, when it was recognized as such, was considered to be caused by the parents (particularly the mother), and little if anything was done to help those children.</p>
<p>In other words, natural selection took care of more of the “weak” members of the human race, and shame, ignorance, and confusion kept many of the others out of the public eye. There were people who couldn’t just “tough it out,” but they were out of the way, people we mostly didn’t see. Would we want to go back to that way of dealing with people who have a hard time handling life’s challenges?</p>