Hi Mark,
Nice post. I don’t have children so I can’t relate to most, except one subject. “Let them do as much for themselves as they possibly can” is what has gone terribly wrong in Greece where I grew up with. No comparisons with other countries, because I’m sure it happened elsewhere.
Greek families, had a relatively tough time, including poverty and dictatorship , after WW2 for reasons you can find online. My parents generation, tried in their all good will to remove any hardship from their children and in doing so they’ve managed to raise adults that are so afraid of any challenge and change. And it is such a shame as Greek people have been historically one of the most tenacious nations in the history.
I would say that this is approach is not stranger in most countries. Similar techniques have been applied, mostly by providing too much comfort which unavoidably allows the child to grow up with no experience or knowledge of some real life challenged. We are so obsessed in protecting children from all “harm”, that we forget a basic rule of learning, that is you have to fail first to learn from the mistake. All the children I had met when I was 20 that were capable of dealing with life if necessary, where children who for whatever reason had harder childhood, either because of parents not getting along, or because of financial reasons or because they were bullied by their wealthy peers.
