Snowplough Parents will stop at nothing to ensure their children get the best. Witness the recent university admissions scandal at top universities in the US in which 50 people, including Hollywood actresses Felicity Huffman and Lori Loughlin, have been charged in a cheating scheme bribing entrance exam administrators to boost children’s exam scores and university coaches to accept children onto university sporting teams so they would qualify for admission, when they didn’t even play the sports.
Typical Snowplough Parents will do their children’s homework, donate costumes to ensure their children get the best roles in the school play, pressure the coach to ensure their child makes the team or speak to the school head to ensure their child gets preferential treatment. Most of us want to support our children. But doing things for our children can give them the message that we don’t think they are good enough to do things for themselves. Further, a little bit of failure along the way may be no bad thing because we can help our children to come to terms with their unhappy feelings and put things into perspective. So how much should we be doing for our children and how much support is too much?
Take a look at the interview I did on Good Morning Britain discussing Snowplough Parenting to find out.
I also had the pleasure of speaking about how to spot a Snowplough Parent with Helen Kirwan-Taylor for the Evening Standard Magazine.
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