What makes you think that we're raising a nation of wimps?
I didn't set out to write a book of that title. In 2002, I discovered that record numbers of college students were experiencing serious psychological disorders. Major depression. Panic attacks. Self-mutilation. Eating disorders. Substance use and abuse. I spoke to hundreds of campus counseling center directors and the people manning the front lines in them. The article I wrote, Crisis on the Campus, made news. In 2004, I found that things had only gotten worse. All along, I had been asking why. The folks at the front lines find that today's students lack the most basic coping skills, because growing up they were overprotected, never allowed to mess up or to experience discomfort, never encouraged to take risks. Coping skills come from figuring out ways to deal with uncertainty and life's lumps and bumps. When the lumps and bumps are smoothed out for you, you have no opportunity to learn how to cope. Then, when you leave the protective cocoon of home for college, you feel overwhelmed by the slightest difficulty. So my book evolved from the evidence that these kids are already psychologically very fragile.
Why do parents overprotect their...
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Dr. Mel Levine
Dr. Mel Levine was formerly a Professor of Pediatrics at the University of North Carolina Medical School in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Dr. Levine is also the co-founder of All Kinds of Minds, a non-profit Institute for the ... (more)
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Gabor Maté, M.D., is the bestselling author of When the Body Says No and Scattered Minds, In The Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction, and co-author of Hold On To Your Kids with Gordon Neufeld, Ph.D. ... (more)
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