For subscribers
Ambitious parents are instrumental in childhood’s modern malaise
Parental anxiety is contagious but we constantly push for our children’s successes and intervene in their failures
Sign up now: Get ST's newsletters delivered to your inbox
Few are immune to wondering whether we are failing our children by not being pushy enough, says the author.
PHOTO ILLUSTRATION: PEXELS
Camilla Cavendish
Follow topic:
The run-up to Christmas was also the season for piano exams. I was waiting with my youngest in some soulless hall, when a boy of about eight arrived with his father and two teachers, all of them whispering last-minute instructions at him. The organiser had to prevent the father accompanying his son into the exam room: Children must perform on their own, he explained. This seemed to be a new idea.
When my own child trooped off to his fate at the keyboard, I asked the father which grade his son was taking. “Grade 1”, he replied: beginner level. Whoa, I thought, this was a truly vertiginous level of helicopter parenting.
