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A Graphic Reminder

Wednesday, May 29th, 2019

Following up on yesterday’s post I thought it would be good to provide a graphic reminder.

Share it with any helicopter or snowplow parents you know, especially if they are looking back at you from the bathroom mirror.

Image credit: DC School HUB

It’s NOT Progress or How to Really Ruin Your Kid’s Life

Tuesday, May 28th, 2019

——->

There’s been lots of talk and media coverage over the last few years about helicopter parenting.

That was then.

Over the last few years parents have raised the bar — or perhaps I should say lowered it.

They have become snowplows, which is even worse.

How bad is it?

At Stanford, said Julie Lythcott-Haims, the former dean of freshmen, she saw students rely on their parents to set up play dates with people in their dorm or complain to their child’s employers when an internship didn’t lead to a job. (…) Snowplow parents have it backward, Ms. Lythcott-Haims said: “The point is to prepare the kid for the road, instead of preparing the road for the kid.”

That goes hand-in-hand with my philosophy about coping vs. control.

Nor does end when they leave school.

In a new poll by The New York Times and Morning Consult of a nationally representative group of parents of children ages 18 to 28, three-quarters had made appointments for their adult children, like for doctor visits or haircuts, and the same share had reminded them of deadlines for school. Eleven percent said they would contact their child’s employer if their child had an issue.

Parents contacting managers isn’t new, I wrote about it way back in 2010.

Do you recall how the Boomers complained and blamed their parents generation for the world they were inheriting?

The world they are leaving their kids is in far worse shape, not to mention that they prevented those same kids from gaining the skills they need to deal with it.

Image credit: Les Chatfield and Stewart Kaye

A Joke, 3 Links and Time Off

Friday, June 29th, 2018

 https://hikingartist.com/2015/04/15/fish-in-doubt/

 

It’s the last day of June and I’m a bit burned out. So I’ve decided to do something I have done in the 12 years of this blog.

I’m going to take the entire next week, July 1-7 off. Call it a mental health week.

Rather leave you with nothing to do while I’m gone I thought I’d share a three valuable links and one excellent joke (or maybe it’s a meme)

A techie and his wife were having a conversation about their attitudes towards life and death.

The techie had very strong feelings about his end-of-life preferences. He said didn’t want his brain frozen or any other Silicon Valley ideas.

“Never let me live in a vegetative state, totally dependent on machines and liquids from a bottle. If you see me in that state I want you to disconnect all the connections that are keeping me alive, I’d much rather die.”

At that point, his wife got up from the sofa with a look of pure admiration on her face and came towards him.

She gave him a hug and proceeded to disconnect the Cable TV,  DVD, computer, smart phone, iPod,  Xbox, and Alexa.

Then she went to the bar and threw away all the whiskey, rum, gin, vodka, along with the beer from the fridge.

Then she held him tenderly and used mouth-to-mouth to help him breathe.

Because her husband almost died.

As to the links,

Obvious as it sound, watching experts does not improve your skills.

A pair of researchers from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business conducted six separate experiments in which people who watched an expert demonstration of a particular skill experienced a big surge in confidence in their own skill-doing ability, and zero increase in their actual ability.

A first person account of why you shouldn’t always believe websites, social media or reviews.

Freakin’ Awesome Karaoke Express (or F.A.K.E., for short). I made it up and paid strangers to pump up its online footprint to make it seem real. I didn’t do it to scam anyone or even for the LULZ. I wanted to see firsthand how the fake reputation economy operates. The investigation led me to an online marketplace where a good reputation comes cheap.

Impressive. John Perry Barlow founded the Electronic Frontier Foundation, contributed to the Grateful Dead as a lyricist and in figured out what it took to be a good adult.

According to his Reddit AMA four years ago: “I found myself so surprised to have reached an age of indisputable adult that I wrote up a set of “adult principles” that I’ve been trying to live up to for 35 years.” The rules below are concise, practical, and can be applied to nearly every aspect of life: from waiting in line at the market to having a difficult conversation with a loved one.

Have a fabulous Fourth of July and I’ll see you on the 9th.

Image credit: HikingArtist.com

How To Become An Adult

Wednesday, March 22nd, 2017

Sometimes people seem to forget that kids grow up and become adults.

Or they used to.

The responsibility for most of the problem can be laid at the feet of their parents and their helicopter approach to raising their offspring. Most ironically, they complain when job candidates sport the same attitudes as their own kids.

Other factors retarding adulthood include the escapism offered by today’s video games, especially for under-30 males, the lack of interpersonal skills driven by social media, along with social media’s unsubtle efforts to foster addiction in the name of profit.

And, of course, the largest factor being family and friends, whose emotional and financial support, enable a relatively comfortable living situation.

The difficulty today’s young adults are having in becoming actual adults was the impetus for (what else) a startup.

Rachel Weinstein, a psychotherapist, and Katie Brunelle, a former elementary school teacher and coach, responded by creating the Adulting School, a place for people to gain the skills they need to feel like an adult, from goal-setting and sheet-fitting to how to manage money or hang a picture.

Simon Senek, a British author and motivational speaker, also blames parents for the false expectations of so many Millennials, who never were given the chance to learn/live the process of achievement.

“Everything you want you can have instantaneously, except for job satisfaction and strength of relationships,” Senek argues. “There’s no app for that; they are slow, meandering, uncomfortable processes.”

Whatever you think about a school that teaches adults how to be adults the real question is: in what direction will the next generation go?

Image credit: the Adulting School

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