Share Your Stories
Tell us your Wimp Stories
Do you have personal stories or observations to share about overinvolved parents or overprotected or overmanaged children or their place in today's society? Perhaps you know of instances of other parents behaving in ways that are likely to psychologically cripple their children (living their own lives through their children, engineering their children's lives, expecting perfection, etc.). Or perhaps you think it is desirable to handle children this way.
Feel free to leave your story in the comments section below. While we will be unable to publish all stories to our website know that we do read all of them and will reply if necessary.
Ms. Marano,
I am eagerly awaiting the release of your book, "A Nation of Wimps", having read notice in today's Parade magazine of its impending release next month. I am a university faculty member, and have served in higher education for the last 15 years. During that time, I have become increasingly alarmed by the number of students who seem to have difficulty engaging in higher order thinking, problem solving, or conflict resolution. Concurrently, I have seen an extreme increase in the numbers of contacts to me, my departmental colleagues, my chair, the dean, the provost, or sometimes even directly the university president (not infrequently leapfrogging over the "lower echelon" and going straight to the senior university official), fueled with anger toward some perceived injustice to the student. What is most alarming is that these contacts do not come from the students, but rather from the parents. In other words, parents are descending upon universities, stepping in to "kick some butt" when we dare to do something amazingly heinous like require their young adults to adhere to syllabus, departmental, college, and/or university requirements, policies, and procedures. When I hear a parent say, "What would it hurt to bend the rules a bit?", I hear echoes of years of that parent engineering environments to smooth the road for his/her child, rather than expecting the child to be accountable to the demands of that same environment. When I hear a parent say, "You obviously didn't advise him/her correctly" (when I know I had), I detect a pattern of parents listening raptly to the laments of a child and not bothering to seek the whole story from the other side before sanctioning the manipulation.
I take comfort in knowing that these on-site, up-close-and-personal "helicopter" situations are very much in the minority of the students I encounter, thankfully. My alarm stems from the fact that the situations happen at all, at this stage of a student's life when he/she is legally an adult, and that they seem to be happening with significantly more frequency. And, of course, it seems that even if parents are not hovering at our doors, there is still that pesky, and equally alarming, problem of their young adults not being able to think critically, problem solve, etc. -- somehow I attribute this to that same "non-accountability" mindset -- even if the parents are not hovering in person, their influence or lack of it still is, and I see that evidence almost every day.
My colleagues and I have discussed this very issue at some length. Your publicity on your upcoming book seems to suggest that helicopter parenting at the younger years seems to result in, e.g., self-destructive behavior at the college level. I hope you have looked beyond that to identifying behaviors at the university level that not only demonstrate those types of behaviors, but also behaviors that bring into question the ability to move successfully into independent adult roles.
Again, I look forward to the publication of your book.
Unfortunately my boyfriend's youngest son is a victim of overparenting. His mother does not allow the child to be disappointed and pretty much allows him to do as he wishes. At 10 years old, the child cannot deal with anything negative. A few weekends ago, due to inclement weather, he had 2 baseball games cancelled. He proceeded to start bawling as he went to his room. When his brother asked him what was wrong, he proceeded to punch his brother. Not the kind of reaction you should have when someone is expressing concern.