Are we in danger of raising a marshmallow generation?

You bet. First, large number of Australian parents were hesitant to set limits or boundaries, use moral language or enforce consequences when their progeny make bad choices. Now, this permissive parenting is being compounded by a segment of the parenting population who have an almost pathological desire to protect their children from disappointment and failure – presumably because they are frightened of challenging them or placing too much pressure on them to succeed.

Working hand in hand with some schools, in their zeal to shield these young people from discomfort, disappointment and distress, there is a tendency to overcompensate by swathing them in metaphorical cotton wool.

Whether it is not allowing actual scoring at football - because we can’t have a losing team, or awarding participation ribbons rather
than first, second and third prizes to ‘minimise’ competition, or giving every child a ‘satisfactory grade’ at school – they are lulling
their offspring into the mistaken belief that life is all sweetness and light. This ‘bowl of cherries’, rose coloured glasses view of life
is not just wrong but ultimately unhelpful.

The truth is that all of life's important lessons are usually accompanied by a degree of grief, pain and suffering. Do these ‘Pollyanna’ parents ever think about how their children will cope with the rude awakening that firstly, life is not always fair, secondly, bad things happen to good people and lastly that random and chaos abounds in our universe?

When you take away the ability to win and lose, where is the incentive to achieve and get better? We remove the capacity for them to develop resilience and the ability to face, overcome and be strengthened by adversity. How will these children learn to associate effort with outcome?

The result will be a generation of young people incapable of assuming adult responsibility with no idea how to handle the routine challenges of life, making them risk-averse, psychologically anaemic, and riddled with fragility and anxiety.

Last time I looked, failure and experimentation were the true architects of success. Parents and schools seem to be trying to remove failure from the equation. With record levels of anxiety and depression, such ‘looney tunes’ parenting practices could be the hidden psychological fault lines for the next generation.

Surely, it is now time to question this substandard and ill conceived strategy for raising kids? In lieu of any definitive research, there will be those who disagree, which is their right, but what sort of a civilisation will we have if our young continue to progress down this path?

As a school child, if I or my fellow students complained about something - we had a teacher - ironically called - Mr Cherry who
would say - "You'll live. If not, you'll die. Either way, problem solved."

Sometimes children need to feel badly…we learn through experience and both good and bad. It is through failure we learn how to cope.