From Playgrounds to College: Failure Helps Build Kids’ Resilience

Helicopter and bulldozer parents be warned—you could be undermining your children

Bubble-wrapping children doesn’t work. They need to experience mild adversity and learn to overcome it when they inevitably face it in life. Shutterstock

The extreme and even illegal measures parents will take to ensure their children are successful has come into sharp focus after allegations that wealthy and sometimes famous parents had paid for their children to gain entrance to the most prestigious post-secondary institutions in the United States.

Parenting trends that protect children from negative experiences and failure are far from new. The concept of “helicopter parenting” emerged in the 1980s to describe overly anxious parents who hover over their children to keep them safe.