The Coddling of the American Mind
By Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt – Penguin Press 2018
When many of us were young, we were free-range kids. We teamed up with our friends and went looking for adventure. We could ride our bikes all over town.
Three friends and I once pedaled all the way to Groton. We were only 10. At some point, public opinion shifted and parents felt they needed to shield their children from harm. Kids could no longer be left unsupervised. Trampolines and climbing ropes disappeared from gym class. The high diving board was removed from the city’s pool and the tall slide was dismantled and taken away.
Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt noticed the trend toward sparing young people from having to deal with adversity. They teamed up to have a close look at whether institutions have gone overboard. In the name of safety and security have we deprived our youth from facing challenges and confronting new ideas? In their book “The Coddling of the American Mind,” Greg and Jon give us an in-depth look at what has been happening in our society and on our college campuses in particular.
Early in the book, Jon tells the story of bringing his 3-year-old to pre-school. During the orientation, he was told that all types of nuts and nut products were forbidden. Jon asks the room full of parents if any of their kids have peanut allergies. None of them do, yet his son cannot bring a peanut butter sandwich to school.
Jon thinks about the fact that food allergies were a lot less common 40 years ago when he was growing up. So he does a bit of research. Studies have shown that avoiding peanuts early in life results in a much higher probability of manifesting the sometimes life-threatening allergic reaction. Exposure to modest amounts of peanuts and peanut products from infancy helps the immune system to strengthen and inhibits the allergy from ever developing. In this book, we learn that kids are not easily breakable.
As Nassim Nicholas Taleb explains it, children are anti-fragile. Learning to develop skills and grow to be strong and independent requires unstructured, unsupervised time to figure things out the hard way. Bumps, scrapes and bruises come with that territory. Hardship and adversity build character.
If we want our children to be self-reliant we must resist the urge to overprotect them. There was a time when children were encouraged to learn responsibility. They could go to the park on their own and make friends. We would trust them and encourage them to venture out in the world. We might send them a few blocks away to the store. There are many practical ideas in this book for helping your children build their resilience.
I love the idea of printing out a Let Grow License your kid can carry. It is like a learner’s permit for being out in the world by yourself in the event some busybody calls 911 or CPS. Check out Letgrow.org. This is such a fun site for parents of young children. Colleges struggle with incoming students who are unsure of who they are. We need to encourage our kids to bravely face new challenges and experiences. Then when it is time to leave home they will do so with confidence.
