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Nicole Eisenberg’s older son has wanted to be a star of the stage since he was a toddler, she said. He took voice, dance and drama lessons and attended the renowned Stagedoor Manor summer camp for half a dozen years, but she was anxious that might not be enough to get him into the best performing-arts programs.

So Ms. Eisenberg and others in Bloomfield Hills, Mich., the affluent suburb where she lives, helped him start a charity with friends that raised more than $250,000 over four years.

“The moms — the four or five moms that started it together — we started it, we helped, but we did not do it for them,” Ms. Eisenberg, 49, recalled. “Did we ask for sponsors for them? Yes. Did we ask for money for them? Yes. But they had to do the work.”

College has been on their radar since her son was in diapers. “We’ve been working on this since he was 3 years old,” she said. To apply, she said, “I had to take him on 20 auditions for musical theater. But he did it with me. I don’t feel like I did this. I supported him in it. I did not helicopter parent him. I was a co-pilot.”

Or was she, perhaps, a … snowplow parent?

Helicopter parenting, the practice of hovering anxiously near one’s children, monitoring their every activity, is so 20th century. Some affluent mothers and fathers now are more like snowplows: machines chugging ahead, clearing any obstacles in their child’s path to success, so they don’t have to encounter failure, frustration or lost opportunities.

...snip about the college bribery stuff...

The bribery scandal has “just highlighted an incredibly dark side of what has become normative, which is making sure that your kid has the best, is exposed to the best, has every advantage — without understanding how disabling that can be,” said Madeline Levine, a psychologist and the author of “Teach Your Children Well: Why Values and Coping Skills Matter More Than Grades, Trophies or ‘Fat Envelopes.’”

“They’ve cleared everything out of their kids’ way,” she said.

In her practice, Dr. Levine said, she regularly sees college freshmen who “have had to come home from Emory or Brown because they don’t have the minimal kinds of adult skills that one needs to be in college.”

One came home because there was a rat in the dorm room. Some didn’t like their roommates. Others said it was too much work, and they had never learned independent study skills. One didn’t like to eat food with sauce. Her whole life, her parents had helped her avoid sauce, calling friends before going to their houses for dinner. At college, she didn’t know how to cope with the cafeteria options — covered in sauce.

“Here are parents who have spent 18 years grooming their kids with what they perceive as advantages, but they’re not,” Dr. Levine said.

If children have never faced an obstacle, what happens when they get into the real world?

They flounder, said Julie Lythcott-Haims, the former dean of freshmen at Stanford and the author of “How to Raise an Adult: Break Free of the Overparenting Trap and Prepare Your Kid for Success.”

At Stanford, she said, 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. The root cause, she said, was parents who had never let their children make mistakes or face challenges.

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.”

More at LINK

Who the fuck doesn't like sauce.

One father I knew always told his kids to have a plan for when they turned 18 and/or finished high school. Told them they would be on their own but that he would help them learn everything they needed to hit the mark prepared. His wife was in wholehearted agreement with him.

The kids got their own scholarships and funding and went off to college, accomplished if not finely polished.

Before they were called snowplow parents the name used was lawnmower parents.

I think the author simply changed the name to sound edgy and match the present season.

Lol

Fpni as always

Communists

That's in the article too. It's more about how so many kids are unable to handle life without their parents taking care of stuff for them, not the name.

Oh shit! The sky's falling?

I am ashamed to say my parents did everything for me.  Oh, wait, that was my perfect sisters, not me!  

Commies.

Eisenberg?

Stupid article. Parents have always tried to give their kids a head start. Nothing new.

Well those type of kids are snowflakes,so...

I'm reading a book called The Talent Code.

The author has done a lot of research into people that excel at sports, music, writing and other disciplines.
The people that really excel learn from a constant series of making mistakes and then correcting them.

So the jokes on these parents, they are setting their kids up to be complete failures as adults.

The only chance is they have is if mom or dad die while they're young.
A significant number of politicians and .gov leaders have a parent die at a young age.

The sauce is the boss.

Attached File

its like these parents are trying re-do their own shitty lives through their children.

Head start yes, doing all the work for them........well, that's the new stupid.

There’s a lot more to this, between the lines.

Between the bribery scandals and these anecdotes, the dismal and pathetic state of elite college admissions processes cannot be ignored. These kids are all supposed to be proven leaders with a proven track record. When they can’t even function on their own, the whole process is a sham.

FPNI

Flat earthers.

Yes.  You see it on the sports fields all the time.  “My little Johnny is going to be a professional athlete!”  Uh, no he’s not.

Sounds a bit like late 1700s England and the nobility class to me.

Something of a natural progression from the way many boomer parents did things. My kids will be better off and all that.

The difference is that the boomers dealt with real problems. They did such a good job that their offspring (and offspring of offspring) have little to worry about.

I know an almost-30 woman who has the diet of a picky 4 year old.

She hates condiments, refuses to eat anything with sauce, tried a hamburger for the first time just a month ago.

Of course she looks like absolute dogshit since her diet consists of chicken nuggets and dry processed meat sandwiches.

Had the displeasure of working with her for a bit and she'd throw a tantrum at the smell of my lunches almost every day.

So I would be having pork ribs with bbq sauce and she'd say it smelled terrible and disgusting.

Eat shit, bitch.

Ah, the parents who do everything for their kids to ensure they get the best grades and have the easiest time getting into a ivy league college.

The look on their faces when their kid enlists in the Marine Corps.

I was subjected to more of a "free range" type of parenting.....But with consequences if I fucked-up.

Yes, that certainly sounds like the Bloomfield Hills I know.  

FPNI

"You no like a da sauce?"

With our kids, dinner is dinner. Whatever my wife and I wanted, that's what's on the kids' plates.

If they don't like it, well, tough shit. No child ever starved to death when food was available. And there's no snacks if dinner isn't eaten. It goes in the fridge for later if they get hungry.

Some people actually find this horrific.

Rejection is going to be hard for them.

Fuckin A, saw this and LOL

My step son was watching a video about that and he kept saying, 'What the hell is wrong with kids these days? Are they retarded?'

their parents will just start using arranged marriages, and pay the other parents to marry their shithead brat.

I cannot stop laughing at that FPNI.  Even my wife is amused.  She said, "all that information, and his takeaway was THE SAUCE?"

Exactly.  I use the phrase "You eat with the pack or you don't eat at all" in my house.

CMOS

A while back, I went to my college's 25th reunion.  We had dinner with the College President.

One of his comments - In the early and mid-80's we never heard from student's parents.  Absent an emergency or serious disciplinary issue, they only called or came to campus for parent's weekend and graduation.

Now, we hear from them constantly.  They call about everything.  The food, their child's schedule, their child's grades, whether the campus will be closed due to weather.   It never ends.  Its like running an elementary school.

this has always been done by the wealthy.  Do you think Ted Kennedy ever earned anything on his own?

About 10 years ago my dad started getting calls from parents. He had one student with a 0 because he never showed up to class and never took the tests. It was an 0800 class. The father told my dad, a Department Chair with a PhD and a list of awards, publications, patents etc., that it was his job to make sure this kid got up on time and got to class. My dad laughed at him and hung up.

A few years he ago he retired and quit because the Dean, without my dad's signature and approval (he wouldn't give it), changed a student's grade from an F to a C so she could graduate. "Because her parents had already bought plane tickets" to come to graduation.

It takes that much to get into acting, unless you are famous to begin with

Our future is fucked. I hope it comes after I'm dead.

They are kids that the parents have set up to fail in life

Ding, ding, ding! We got a winner

Same mentality is prevalent in society. People have no spine to let others deal with the consequences of there actions. Complete bullshit

With parents like that you tend to end up with this.....

Stressful lives.....

Yeah, except they're going about it all fucked up.

I'm trying to give my kid's a head start too. Through discipline, hard work, and controlled adversity.

That was my big takeaway as well.

My parents firmly believed that you had to plow your own field. I was expected to be moved out of their house right after breakfast the day after my 18th birthday. I took off fully unprepared with everything I owned in a back pack and $6.00 in my pocket. I hit bottom before I pulled my head out of my ass.

Now, I am comfortably retired enjoying life. Looking back it was the best thing they could have done for me.

My dad told me "when you turn 18, it's off to college or off to the Marine Corps.  College or Corps."  He taught me to repeat that on command: "at 18, it's College or Corps."

I was 6 years old.

So I went to college, then joined the Army.  I sure showed him!!