Friday Feature: Snowplow Parents

My Friday Feature posts began as what-I'm-reading-in-ten-minutes-or-less posts. Today, what I've been reading is exams -- the ones I'm creating for classes next week -- which means reading and posting are happening later than usual.

Luckily, a great piece arrived in my inbox earlier this week. You've heard of helicopter parents? This one's about snowplow parents.

Haven't heard of them? I hadn't either. But, once I read the article, I realized how appropriate the name is, and how it's not just parents who do it.

Snowplow parents, according to author Rachel Simmons, are the ones who clear their children's paths of any obstacles that could conceivably make life difficult. The problem is, they also remove learning opportunities as well.

Sparked by the college admissions scandal, Simmons' piece hit at the heart of my initial reaction to the whole thing. How could parents have so little faith in their own children that they had to pave the way to college in such an over-the-top, can't-take-any-chances fashion?

Perhaps it's more a way of life than a lack of faith but, either way, it removes responsibility for a fledgling young adult's first steps into the future from that young adult. As a parent, I find the message it sends, whether of entitlement or lack of faith, disturbing.

When we remove all foreseeable road blocks from our children's paths, we might perhaps make their lives easier, but how do they ever learn to plow their own snow if we're always doing it for them? What message do they get from us as parents about how we view their capabilities and culpabilities?

Don't get me wrong -- I'm fully in favor of helping people of any age who truly need an assist. But the first step in getting help is often knowing how to ask for it -- or knowing we need to ask for it at all. And, from my perspective, part of being an effective parent (or educator -- but that's another post) is knowing when to step in and when to step back.

And away from the snow plow.