The great self-esteem con
Meh<p>1. &quot;prioritising their feelings of self-worth, telling them they are special and amazing, and cocooning them from everyday consequences.&quot;<p>This annoys me, when people throw in an entirely new assumption at the end of a sentence &quot;...cocooning them from everyday consequences&quot;<p>You can entirely regaurd growing adults with positive self regard AND let them experience the consequences of their actions.<p>The worriesome part about this is the conflation that consequences = lack of positive self regaurd to the growing adult.<p>If you truly uncaccoon growing adults from consequences and let them experience the results of their mistakes, they don&#x27;t need your lecture of negative judgment on top of it, life will be there to teach them, and you can positively regard them as humans that make mistakes, and by not caccooning them expect them to solve the problems.<p>I mean honestly, the parents who believe their kids need a lecture about every mistake they make and judgment are the ones who are known as helicoptor parents and actually those kids end up being the least capable of being their own advocates because their parents never back off and allow them to make their own mistakes and struggle to find their way out.<p>This is why the Standford admissions office did an article on this, supposed Helicoptor parenting which was basically Stanford having problems with all these kids with 4.9 GPAs, 87 AP exams, science fair admissions with PhD level work put into them, who were held to hardcore high standards all work no play no emotion work work work your life = your GPA and the school you get into, and saying these kids literally could not solve the simplest everyday life problems and their parents called the school everyday trying to micromanage them or argue with Professors if their kids got less than B+s on exams<p>Its also why after the Gunn highschool suicide incident, highschool kids posted online to the parents to &quot;back off&quot; and quit pushing their kids so hard.<p>It&#x27;s hard for me to take the rest of the article seriously, but I read on...<p>This is to show the other extreme and REAL effect of the opposite of show no compassion, only regard growing adults based on their accomplishments relative to everyone else.<p>If you take this attitude in life youre not helping your kid grow, you suffocating them, and debilitating their own sense of life navigation. This isn&#x27;t about them, its about YOU imposing your self worth and narcissism and identify and your own self worth on how far along you can get your kid in life, and you need to back off.<p>I&#x27;ve witnessed this first hand going to university, and was really disturbed by helicopter parents versus my upbringing which was not helicopter parenting at all. Never seen kids more miserable in their life. I&#x27;m not even sure it was their life, they were walking poster children for their parents to show society look what I can do. Very few times did I see the kids who grew up like this get to make any of their own decisions. Very sad.<p>2. Grade inflation IS NOT there to boost self esteem, its there to allow elite institutions to maintain elitism by getting ivy kids good jobs and preparing them well for exams.<p>2&#x2F;3s of all grades made at Brown University are As. It&#x27;s there so everyone can get good jobs at high end consulting firms if they choose to instead of using their Political Science degree for some less profitable career path where the need is great, and grades&#x2F;competition&#x2F;elite ivy names matter less.<p>GPA grade inflation is about highschools gaining and maintaining status to justify private school tuition, and college does the same equivalent but has the double incentive of increasing competition to admissions for more room to choose the cream of the crop, and increasing the dowry back to the school from happy and financially successful alumni.<p>Both appeals to the idea that<p>a. negative judgment from their parents or teachers is the only way to allow growing adults to experience consequences of their actions<p>b. grade inflation is for the self esteem boost of individuals.<p>are false and the rest of this article rides on these astounding assumptions the author assumes you will buy into<p>*Note: I do understand the everyone is a winner, and clapping for every extracurricular club your kid joins, and treating them like little geniuses who Harvard would be at a loss of not having because youve decided thats the case for your baby since he showed his genius capabilities by bring two months early on the growth scale for expected timeline for piecing legos together, and ever since youve just been doing your job by providing the best past of growth for your little genius...yeh yeh yeh I know that happens<p>but that has nothing to do with needing negative judgment to grow, or the motivation behind grade inflation, which is strictly for the long term financial benefit of the institutions providing it.