How being a 'good parent' could harm your child's future
'Does enabling a childhood free from stress really help them in the long term? And what happens when children never have to get themselves out of tricky situations?'
When many middle-aged people think back to their childhood, they remember roaming the streets with their friends during long, hot summers. Our parents threw us out the door in the morning and instructed us not to come back until dinnertime. Often in charge of younger siblings, we strayed further than we should have, got into trouble and, by the end of the summer, had a collection of triumphs, scars and memories for life. But surely such memories are just nostalgia? The bit about the sun always shining probably is. Yet one thing is certain – the level of parental involvement and supervision in the 1970s was not a tenth of what is expected today. Fast forward to 2014 and a woman was arrested for allowing her nine-year-old to play in the park while she worked. So what impact do increasing levels of parental involvement have on children? Let’s take a look at the evidence. A recent survey of children aged eight to 12 found that indoor play is now the norm, a third have never splashed in ...
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