There is an intriguing TV ad for a credit monitoring company that through a singing narrator tells the story of a college student who overspends on credit cards for a pizza party for the whole dorm; a spring break trip to Mexico about which the parents “didn’t know” since they did not use this company’s services. The ad ends with the consequence “hard times for mommy and dad”.
What?
The adult lives in a college town in a college dorm and makes financial decisions without parental input…on what basis should that result in any consequences for the parents? Personal responsibility would dictate that the college student—post high school adult—has made financial choices and decisions that rightly result in consequences for himself—not for his parents!
In this case, the consequences are like a brick that you choose to pick up, put in your pocket, and carry around. You do not have to do that: you make a choice to carry the brick.
If the parents make the choice to shoulder the responsibility that rightly belongs to their adult college student—shame on those parents! These would be the same parents who have been coddling and babying their offspring for their whole lives ensuring that-- barring the intervention of the criminal justice system, the military or a religious conversion --their adult offspring will be permanently emotionally financially crippled— and I use that last word on purpose.
You have to hate your progeny to subject them to this state of affairs. Yet many parents who believe themselves to be loving and supportive are so thoroughly misguided that their actions are detrimental to the development of their offspring.
Roll back the clock:
To what age does a child wear diapers? Even if you call them by a more socially acceptable name they are diapers. Children can and should be toilet trained no later than age two for most normally intelligent physically healthy children.
To what age does a child share his/her parents’ bed?
Two years? Four years? Six years?
Children can and should sleep in their own beds after a few weeks of age, certainly a few months. A child a year old has no need to sleep with his/her parents.
In fact it is the parents’ needs that are being catered to here, or perhaps the parents’ fears. Regardless of which it is, this infantilizing of children is detrimental to the child’s development.
To what age does a parent choose the child’s clothes? Or dress the child? Or tie the child’s shoes? Oh, I know some parents today avoid having their children challenged to learn to tie their own shoes—they just Velcro them!
But that is a poor parenting choice! Kid’s need to learn to tie their own shoes.
It gives them a sense of competence and confidence that they are growing up that they are not babies anymore. They need that!
Eye-hand coordination, fine motor skills, memory, focus, attention, concentration are all enhanced by the mastery of tying one’s own shoes. Doing for someone what they can and should do for themselves—is detrimental.
When I choose for you, I am subtly suggesting that you are incapable of making the “right” , “best”, “acceptable choice”. Your self-esteem, self-concept, self-confidence are undermined if I do for you what you can and should do for yourself.
While these parents may “mean well” they are in fact causing significant harm. They are raising their kids to be irresponsible, incompetent screw-ups. Then the parents clean up the mess…over and over.
That is how you get to have college aged adults who makes irresponsible financial decisions fully expecting that his/her parents will “clean up the mess”-- as they have always done.
So I suppose if you have raised your college age adults to depend on you for everything …maybe you had better buy that product.
You will need some forewarning to mitigate the damages to your wallet. But how can you mitigate the damages that you have done to your college aged adult?
