Snowplough parents - why what you think is best for your child isn't best for your child or anyone else's

Snowplough parents - Clearing everything out of the way of your child in order to support them and ensure their self esteem. "There are parents who have such high aspirations that they are frightened of an occasion when their child may come second", Clarissa Farr, headmistress of St Paul’s girls’ school in London is said to have told a workshop at the Girls’ Schools Association conference last week. (Thank you Guardian.)

But does it help? If you've never experienced failure or loss how do you cope with it? Our first big crisis, our first loss - death of a pet or grandparent, break up with a boy/girlfriend, - our first crushing failure all shape us.

 

What do you do when you've made a big mistake? Or when something really hurts you? It's not theoretical. It's visceral, emotional. It's a soft skill (as well as a set of strategies) we learn through application and experience. What happens when you are no longer first and best? What does being superior mean? Without the experience and the practice we end up with a lack of empathy, lack of community, lack of social interest. Narrow minded individuals who are fine when all goes well but hopeless when it goes badly. There are behaviours and responses we would tolerate in toddlers, ten year olds and perhaps even adolescents that are unacceptable and even dangerous in twenty and thirty something's.

So why don't we put away the snowploughs and teach the young people around us to join together with a shovel and our bare hands and work together. Even let ourselves fall on our backsides once in a while. Build character through experience. It will do us, individually and collectively, more good in the long run.