Children who don’t grow up

This article at Psychology Today suggests that today's children are damaged by their parents' helicoptering:

In previous posts . . . I have described the dramatic decline, over the past few decades, in children’s opportunities to play, explore, and pursue their own interests away from adults. Among the consequences, I have argued, are well-documented increases in anxiety and depression and decreases in the sense of control of their own lives. We have raised a generation of young people who have not been given the opportunity to learn how to solve their own problems. They have not been given the opportunity to get into trouble and find their own way out, to experience failure and realize they can survive it, to be called bad names by others and learn how to respond without adult intervention. So now, here’s what we have. Young people,18 years and older, going to college still unable or unwilling to take responsibility for themselves, still feeling that if a problem arises they need an adult to solve it.

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Milgram experiment reenacted by the BBC in 2009

Consider whether we are capable of learning basic moral lessons. This in a reenactment of the Millgram experiment by the BBC. This video drives home the terrible things that human beings are capable of doing, even when not coerced, where they are merely requested to do these terrible things by an apparent authority figure. Massively unsettling.

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The power of listening

A good friend of mine named Tom was an excellent parent - his son was a really cool kid. When I was about to adopt my first child I asked him what advice he had for raising children. He said, "Listen to them. Listen actively. Everything else will follow from that." After having raised two children, I find that to be excellent advice. Eric Barker has published a post on the power of listening. He calls it, "How To Be Loved By Everyone: 6 Powerful Secrets," which is not a good title, because I consider it self destructive to try to be loved by everyone. But I agree with the content of the post, which centers on improving relationships by active listening. Here are Barker's take-aways:

Be a detective. You need to be interested. The best way to do that is to play detective and be curious. How little can you say? Ask questions. Paraphrase to make sure you understand. Past that, just shut up. Can you summarize to their approval? If you paraphrase what they said and they reply, “Exactly” — you win. Don’t try to fix them. Be Socrates. Help them find their own solution. People remember their own ideas best. Monitor body language. Eye contact and open postures are good. Touch their elbow to help create a bond. Review the common mistakes we all make. And then don’t do them. Listen and people will listen back. In fact, they’ll do more than that. They will come to trust and love you.
He ends with this quote by David Augsburger: “Being heard is so close to being loved that for the average person, they are almost indistinguishable."

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