Introduction: Five Questions for Parents

The most loving parents and relatives commit murder with smiles on their faces. They force us to destroy the person we really are: a subtle kind of murder.⁷

—Jim Morrison

You have good intentions and love your child. You want your child to get into a good college, declare the right major, and land that dream job. You want your child to be financially independent. You want to make sure that you get a return on your investment of high-priced college tuition. You want your child to be a homeowner. You want to make sure that your child can pay back their college loans. All of this, of course, is what you want. As one parent declared, “It’s incredibly competitive out there, and I don’t want my child left in the dust.”⁸ Another way of stating that is “I want my child to get ahead.” Childhood, starting at its earliest ages is now a race. But a race to where? And what is the prize? More importantly, who determines the prize?

A 2009 documentary entitled Race to Nowhere examines the lives of young people across the United States “who have been pushed to the brink, educators who are burned out and worried that students aren’t developing the skills they need, and parents who are trying to do what’s best for their children.”⁹ To paraphrase a quote from Dr. Wendy Mogel, parents need to understand that it is their job to prepare children for the road, not to prepare the road for children.¹⁰ Have you prepared the road for your child? Have you walked around campus with your first-year student to check out all of their classrooms during orientation? Have you substituted your voice for your child’s? For those well-intentioned parents, have you asked your child what he/she wants? How do you know what they want? How often do you ask about their dreams? And if you do ask, how often do you listen to their answer? Do you engage in a common doublespeak that has emerged recently? Parents might tell their child that “All I care about is that you’re happy, but when the kid walks in the door is the first question you ask how did you do on the math test?”¹¹

Throughout the last 30 years, I have studied, taught, hired, worked alongside, and trained undergraduates. My wife and I raised two children; one graduated from a major research university and one is currently attending college. Along the way I discovered that the self-determination theory (SDT), an approach to human motivation and personality, formed the foundation of my decision-making process. SDT articulates that enhanced performance, persistence, and creativity, arguably three critical skills everyone needs to succeed, are best fostered by an individual developing a sense of autonomy, competence, and relatedness.¹² Another way to think of SDT comes from author Frank A. Clark who once wrote “The most important thing that parents can teach their children is how to get along without them.”¹³

Unfortunately, many parents with good intentions are failing by prohibiting their child’s self-determination. An epidemic of hyper-involvement known as helicopter parenting has emerged during the last three decades.¹⁴ Helicopter parents often micromanage every decision, dictate schedules, and control relationships for their children.¹⁵ In the world of academics or anything that could be interpreted as competitive, helicopter parenting kicks into high gear. “In communities where academic expectations run highest parents obsess over their child acing an exam, burnishing the transcript, and keeping up with high-achieving peers.”¹⁶ Such intrusiveness has led to children being co-dependent on their parent. Subsequently, high school students of helicopter parents who attend college are left with feelings of incompetence and isolation. These feelings have directly or indirectly contributed to increased rates of depression, anxiety, and sadness found on campuses across the country. In its 2013 survey of approximately 100,000 college students spanning over 150 different campuses around the United States, the American College Health Association discovered some very troubling statistics on how students felt at some point during the previous 12 months: 84.3 percent felt overwhelmed by all they had to do, 60.5 percent felt very sad, and 57.0 percent felt very lonely.¹⁷ In another survey, 95 percent of college counseling center directors reported that the number of students with significant psychological problems is a growing concern on their campus.¹⁸ When coupled with other health issues such as the lack of sleep¹⁹ and eating disorders,²⁰ it’s clear that undergraduates are under tremendous stress both physically and mentally.

Unfortunately, further evidence of the severity of intrusive parenting continues when students apply to graduate school. With hard-to-break habits of excessive coddling, the ubiquitous helicopter parent in undergraduate admissions has invaded the graduate-school admissions process as well. “Some of these parents have become so aggressive that they’ve required a new moniker: “snowplow parents,” for their impulse to push obstacles out of their adult children’s way.”²¹ This is even more so with professional schools, especially business and law. “Professional-school applicants, who often apply directly out of college, don’t always have a clear sense of their career goals, creating an opening for parents to intervene.”²² The intrusion is so severe that some graduate admissions officers have set up events where they inform prospective students that even if a parent is nearby, do not allow them to influence your decision or application materials. For these parents who also wonder when their child will grow up, I ask you, when will you allow them to do so?

This invasive parenting occurring at both the undergraduate and graduate levels prohibits students from creating the sense of autonomy, competence, and connectedness required to determine their own sense of self. This level of involvement actually sends the wrong message to children.²³ For those parents who contact the college admissions officer, professor, or coach with the intention of trying to resolve a situation on behalf of their child, they are sending an unintentional message that their child is incompetent. Harvard Psychiatrist Dr. Dan Kindlon concluded that parents who protect children from discomfort or failure actually insulate them from experiences that can facilitate growth and resilience.²⁴ By interfering, the parent is undermining a child’s ability to problem-solve, communicate, and persevere through a difficult situation. These are three critical skills every professional needs to develop throughout his or her entire career. Stunting their growth early on places students at a disadvantage when they graduate since they have had little exposure to them. “When adult children don’t get to practice problem-solving skills, they can’t solve these problems in the future.”²⁵ Well-meaning and misguided parents inadvertently foster a sense of “existential impotence whereby their child lacks the self-awareness, is unable to make choices, and has difficulty coping with setbacks.”²⁶ Staying connected via technology has only exacerbated the problem. By constantly texting, Facebook messaging, or Skyping for daily check-ins, parents further their child’s co-dependency on them. Such hovering is counter-productive to a child’s maturity. As one mother said, “when you hover, you take away that sense of self-esteem.”²⁷ Self-determination demands that a child resolves problems, works through challenging situations, and has difficult conversations with others on his or her own. The journey to self-discovery is lifelong and best made with the child learning how to navigate his or her own life. One such stop along the journey is the declaration of an undergraduate major.

Students often approach the college major decision with a good deal of anxiety, confusion, and doubt. It is no surprise that many students will change their major at least once during their undergraduate experience. Students ask themselves a variety of questions such as: What is the right major? What major will help me with the rest of my life? What major will make me the most money? What major do employers want me to have? Unfortunately some students also find themselves asking questions such as: Will my parents still pay my tuition if I declare this as a major? Will my parents be mad at me with this decision? Will my parents stop talking to me if I declare this as a major? As they often do, helicopter parents attempt to answer or influence how their child answers these questions. This might be difficult to hear but when it comes to the declaration of a college major, parents may not know best. As journalist H.L. Mencken once quipped, “The older I grow the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom.”²⁸ You may indeed be older and have more professional experience than your child, but those two characteristics are far from being qualified to mandate your college student’s undergraduate major.

Many parents feel as though that since they are paying tuition they get to dictate what their child declares as a major. These questions and related approaches on how to answer them frequently strike terror in the hearts and minds of students for the simple fact that they believe if they choose the wrong major their life is ruined. Nothing could be further from the truth. Intrusive parents who encourage this type of thinking are placing their child at a severe disadvantage. For many traditional undergraduates aged 18–24, they are unsure as to what they want to do following graduation. Since cognitive development continues well in the 20s, it is no surprise that a good portion of students buy into the notion that their parents know best. But parents may not know best. Instead of knowing answers, or at least pretending to do so, parents should instead encourage students to explore. Such an approach allows the student to proactively engage in their own self-determination. The helicopter parenting epidemic is so serious; however, one expert proclaimed that “parents who don’t encourage their sons and daughters to be independent are guilty of psychological abuse.”²⁹

To increase your self-awareness and better understand the extent to which you encourage your child’s independence here are five questions to answer. While these questions are pertinent for all parents, they are especially relevant for those who have a child in high school or college. There are many more questions to ask of course, but these five will provide some much needed insight into how often you exhibit the key traits and habits that can help a child develop the autonomy, competence, and connectedness contributing to their own self-determination. Approach each question with the phrase “how often do you…?” instead of “do you…?” This method allows you to view each item as a trait or habit to practice instead of an either-or situation. For example, instead of asking yourself: “Do you support your child’s self-determination?” where you have a yes-or-no dichotomy ask yourself: “How often do you support your child’s self-determination?” This approach allows you to select from a Likert scale of options: never, rarely, sometimes, often, or always for an answer. If you are honest with yourself and conclude that you “sometimes support your child’s self-determination,” then perhaps a reasonable goal for the upcoming months is for you to increase how often you practice that trait.

  1.   How often do you support your child’s self-determination? Another way to ask this question is: How often do you foster autonomy, competence, and connectedness when dealing with your child? Do you find yourself making decisions for them or do you allow them to freely decide? Do you complete a task for them thereby sending the message that the child is incompetent? Fostering self-determination in your child is hard work, so the more you interfere, disrupt, or prohibit their progress, the more challenging it is for them to have a sense of self. Supporting a child’s ability to self-determine involves nurturing their skills and abilities, understanding their thoughts and feelings, and enabling them to dream and aspire. “When parents decide for their children rather than help them to decide for themselves, children become dependent, not independent, compliant rather than adventurous.”³⁰ When it comes to discussing declaring a college major, parents can support their child’s self-determination by recalling the work of Hazel Rose Markus and Paula Nurius who introduced the concept of three possible selves: the ideal self that we would like to become, that we could become, and that we are afraid of becoming. “To suggest that there is a single self to which one ‘can be true’ or an authentic self that one can know is to deny the rich network of potential that surrounds individuals and that is important in identifying and descriptive of them.”³¹

             Consider supporting your child’s decision to declare a major that fosters the development of who they would like to become but also provides them with experiences that allow them to explore who they could become. For those parents courageous enough, encourage your child to explore experiences and learning opportunities that could help them become the person they are afraid of becoming! The four remaining questions are directly linked to self-determination. The more likely you are to foster your child’s self-determination, the more likely you are to practice the following traits as well.

  2.   How often do you allow your child to experience failure, disappointment, or discomfort? Part of self-determination is experiencing failure, disappointment, and discomfort and learning how to work through each situation. Unfortunately, helicopter or snowplowing parents shield their children from even the slightest degree of discomfort. Failure is a distant shore that children of intrusive parents seldom see. Children are sometimes home schooled to prevent them from being exposed to people, ideas, and materials the parents deem inappropriate. Prohibiting children from people or ideas you deem uncomfortable for your child to process and then expecting them to mature into well-adjusted, autonomous adults able to connect with others is simply unrealistic.³² As one mother said, “we need to let our kids chart their own course and make their own mistakes.”³³ Competence is one of the three foundational elements of self-determination, but children need to learn that they can’t be good at everything. To learn lessons of failure, disappointment or discomfort college students need to experience disequilibrium. The experience of psychological and cognitive disequilibrium produces feelings of internal “dissonance” that manifests itself as uncertainty, and sometimes as conflict and even threat.³⁴ “But it is the experience of such dissonance that opens up the possibility for learning and growth because it nudges students into confronting and considering new ways of understanding, thinking, and acting that help to unsettle the old and integrate it with the new.”³⁵

             UCLA psychiatrist Paul Bohn believes many parents will do anything to avoid having their child experience even mild discomfort, anxiety, or disappointment.³⁶ Shielding a child from psychological and cognitive disequilibrium, failure, or discomfort provides a tremendous disservice; “with the result that when, as adults, they experience the normal frustrations of life, they think something must be terribly wrong.”³⁷ “It is essential for students’ learning and growth in college to have challenging stimuli and experiences of positive restlessness because these provide the creative disequilibrium and intellectual foment that drive personal exploration and development.”³⁸

  3.   How often do you demand perfection from your child? New research indicates that “perfection parenting can cause significant stress and anxiety in children”; therefore, “the more parents back off from pushing their children, the better the outcomes for the child.”³⁹ If you foster self-determination for your child, then you seldom, if ever, demand perfection. As a parent in today’s hypercompetitive, dynamic, and ever-changing global marketplace, you understand that perfectionism rigidifies behavior. Demanding perfection from a child constricts behavior. To successfully launch and navigate a career today, one needs to maintain flexibility of mind, be comfortable with ambiguity, and quickly adapt to changing situations. Parents who demand perfection from a child are unrealistic. “Pressure on children to achieve is rampant, because parents now seek much of their status from the performance of their kids.”⁴⁰ How often do you demand that your child achieve perfection? Do you demand that your child selects the perfect college major? If so, do you even know what that means? Do you realize that perfectionism is a form of parental control? Because it lowers the ability to take risks, perfectionism lowers the ability to take calculated risks, reduces creativity, and stifles innovation. Therefore, a child pressured into achieving perfection is highly unlikely to be engaged in self-determination.

             “Psychologists today differentiate between positive perfectionism, which is adaptive and healthy, and negative perfectionism, which is maladaptive and neurotic.”⁴¹ In Tal Ben-Shahar’s book The Pursuit of Perfect, he refers to negative perfectionism simply as perfectionism and to positive perfectionism as optimalism. For Ben-Shahar, the optimist embraces the constraints of reality while a perfectionist rejects those constraints. A child engaged in self-determination learns to accept the constraints of reality, adjusts his or her goals and aspirations accordingly, and demonstrates his or her commitment to discovering the self the child would like to become.

  4.   How often are you certain? Parents who interfere with their child’s decision to declare their undergraduate major often do so out of certainty. The parent is certain that major x is right for their child, but this certainty often interferes with a child’s self-determination. In higher education circles, there is an adage that “every student has two majors: the one their parents want them to have and the one they want to declare.” Being certain about the employability of a major provides a student with false hope and is terribly misleading. In today’s ever-changing global marketplace, “business executives care more about their new hires’ thinking, communication, and problem-solving skills than they do about their undergraduate majors.”⁴² New research also shows that the vast majority of employers (88 percent) are looking for a “cultural fit” over skills in their next hire as more and more companies focus on attrition rates.⁴³ Today, it’s not just about finding the person that can do the job, but finding someone who can fit into the corporate culture. “Companies are looking to hire people who demonstrate uniqueness and creativity and can market themselves to match the company culture.”⁴⁴ For example, a common misbelief expressed by parents to children is that “established fields such as banking, medicine, or law provide a sweet salary and job security; but such assurances are quickly becoming a thing of the past.”⁴⁵ When you are expressing any level of certainty about a college major, it would behoove you to recall the conclusion Philip Tetlock reached in Expert Political Judgment: How Good Is It? How Can We Know? “The average expert was found to be only slightly more accurate than a dart-throwing chimpanzee. Many experts would have done better if they had made random guesses.”⁴⁶

  5.   How often do you equate high salaries with your child’s happiness? Many parents that help pay their child’s college tuition want an immediate return on their investment (ROI). That ROI usually comes in the form of a high starting salary. Intrusive parents dictate that their child can accept a job offer only over a certain dollar amount. These parents equate a high starting salary with their child’s happiness. Once again this type of thinking interferes with a child’s ability to engage in self-determination. For those recent college graduates who are pressured by their parents, they too equate job satisfaction with a high starting salary. The research indicates otherwise. In his 1967 publication The Motivation to Work, Frederick Herzberg identified two different categories of factors affecting the motivation to work: hygiene and motivation. Hygiene factors include extrinsic factors such as technical supervision, interpersonal relations, physical working conditions, salary, company policies and administrative practices, benefits, and job security. In comparison, motivation factors include intrinsic factors such as achievement, recognition and status, responsibility, challenging work, and advancement in the organization. Herzberg’s theory postulates that only motivation factors have the potential of increasing job satisfaction. “The results indicate that the association between salary and job satisfaction is very weak. When employees are focused on external rewards, the effects of intrinsic motives on engagement are significantly diminished. This means that employees who are intrinsically motivated are three times more engaged than employees who are extrinsically motivated (such as by money). Quite simply, you’re more likely to like your job if you focus on the work itself, and less likely to enjoy it if you’re focused on money.”⁴⁷ Daniel Pink’s Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us makes the same observation. While many people believe that the best way to motivate others is with external rewards like money, the reality is that high performance and satisfaction is rooted in the three elements of true motivation: autonomy, mastery, and purpose. When you are discussing potential employment opportunities with your child, do you focus solely on salary and the ability to repay college loans or do you also consider the myriad of other factors that go into job satisfaction? If you are solely focused on salary, what do you think that does to your child’s ability to engage in self-determination?

Here is a list of the five questions. Remember, your options are: never, rarely, sometimes, often, or always.

  1.   How often do you support your child’s self-determination?

  2.   How often do you allow your child to experience failure, disappointment, or discomfort?

  3.   How often do you demand perfection from your child?

  4.   How often are you certain when discussing the future?

  5.   How often do you equate high salaries with your child’s happiness?