Hypersensitivity...

[Moonliner]

Originally Posted by Ghoulish Delight

I believe I mentioned a while ago about the game of musical chairs I witnessed at my company picnic where when a child didn't get a chair, they were told they were the "next winner" and sent back to mom and dad with a prize.

CP told this story to coworkers, who thought it was "adorable." They said kids that young just can't understand losing, and they'll figure it out on their own when they're ready. When CP replied that her parents let her win or lose fairly, they told her, I believe quite literally, that she obviously had horrible parents that didn't care for her.

While the Co-workers in question are definitely outliers on the normal curve of parental behavior for their rudeness alone, it is not uncommon for parents of very young children to feel like they must protect their kids from all evil. Typically they get over it by the time the kids hit 9 or 10 but some persist and they really are horrible parents.

In our kids pre-school the big thing was to "build confidence". My point of view, which of course I stated loudly and often, was that building confidence is a buch of hooey. All you are doing is feeding kids fairy tails about how great they are. My point was (and still is) that the goal should be to build capability and out of capability you naturally get confidence.

For this radical viewpoint I was just about universally shunned by the other pre-school parents.