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Why can’t children make decisions or cope with anxiety? Play….. could it really be the cure for ADHD? Why are college students having more emotional problems than ever? Listen as bestselling author Hara Estroff Marano discusses her findings. In this fascinating 3 part interview she will take you through the problems that academic institutions, parents, coaches, and psychologists are facing. Hara Marano , editor-at-large and the former editor-in-chief of Psychology Today, has been watching a disturbing trend: kids are growing up to be wimps. They can’t make their own decisions, cope with anxiety, or handle difficult emotions without going off the deep end. Teens lack leadership skills. College students engage in deadly binge drinking. Graduates can’t even negotiate their own salaries without bringing mom or dad in for a consult. Why? Because hothouse parents raise teacup children—brittle and breakable, instead of strong and resilient. This crisis threatens to destroy the fabric of our society, to undermine both our democracy and economy. Without future leaders or daring innovators, where will we go? So what can be done? Kids would play in the street until their mothers hailed them for supper, and unless a child was called into the principal’s office, parents and teachers met only at organized conferences. Today, parents are involved in every aspect of their children’s lives—even going so far as using technology to monitor what their kids eat for lunch at school and accompanying their grown children on job interviews. What is going on? Hothouse parenting has hit the mainstream—with disastrous effects. Parents are going to ludicrous lengths to take the lumps and bumps out of life for their children, but the net effect of parental hyper concern and scrutiny is to make kids more fragile. When the real world isn’t the discomfort-free zone kids are accustomed to, they break down in myriad ways. Why is it that those who want only the best for their kids wind up bringing out the worst in them? There is a mental health crisis on college campuses these days, with alarming numbers of students engaging in self-destructive behaviors like binge drinking and cutting or disconnecting through depression. A Nation of Wimps is the first book to connect the dots between over parenting and the social crisis of the young. Psychology expert Hara Marano reveals how parental over involvement hinders a child’s development socially, emotionally, and neurologically. Children become over reactive to stress because they were never free to discover what makes them happy in the first place. Through countless hours of painstaking research and interviews, Hara Marano focuses on the whys and how of this crisis and then turns to what we can do about it in this thought-provoking and groundbreaking book. Listen in this podcast interview as Hara shares her research and what solutions she has found. Hara Estroff Hara Estroff Marano is an author, journalist and editor who, although not a trained psychologist herself has been Editor-at-Large of Psychology Today for the past 15 years, in addition to writing for many other publications such as The New York Times and The Smithsonian. She writes a regular advice column for Psychology Today called “Unconventional Wisdom” and is the author of A Nation of Wimps and two previous books, the most recent on the social development of children, Why Doesn’t Anybody Like Me?: A Guide to Raising Socially Confident Kids (1998). In 2001, she created Psychology Today’s “Blues Buster”, a print newsletter that was the first publication to identify and document the mental health crisis on America’s college campuses. As a result of her reporting she was invited to join the groundbreaking Bringing Theory to Practice Project. Funded by the Engelhard Foundation, it seeks to advance student engagement in learning and civic service as natural means of countering the epidemic of depression and other disorders of disconnection so widespread on American college campuses today. She is also a member of the Board of Governors of the University of Haifa in Israel. The mother of two grown sons, she lives in Brooklyn, New York
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ADHD, ADD, Medication, Psychology Today, Child Psychology,
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