It's just my perspective!

As many of you know, I have been back in the classroom in the role of a supply teacher since I retired, and the wide array of teaching coverages has given me ammunition to argue my opinion about a cancerous tumour wreaking havoc on the education system. I chose my words purposefully there ... this trend truly resembles the carnage that cancer inflicts on the body, disrupting lessons, corrupting learning environments, and creating scores of teacher burnout. Lawnmower parents' children are unnecessarily destroying classroom management through their inordinate demand of teacher's time to serve their unbridled desires as they prance unobstructed through the flowery meadows conjured inside their young minds and it's creating an entitled, myopic attitude towards the world around them.

This post was inspired by an article I read recently that was posted on the Blog Bored Teacher.

Lawnmower Parents Are Setting Children Up for Failure
by mscourterrest

We’ve all heard of helicopter parents. These moms and dads hover obsessively over their children, watch their every move, and intervene on behalf of the child whenever a problem arises. To a teacher, these are the adults that a teacher seems to interact with more so, than the child who they spend 8 hours a day with. As exhausting as these headache-inducing parents are (another email about grades, Mrs. Smith, REALLY?!), I’m here to tell you that the real nightmare is a new breed of adults called lawnmower parents.

Lawnmower parents are, without a doubt, oppositional forces to everything educators are trying to teach their students. You see, dear reader, helicopter parents only intervene when they sniff out something wrong that has upset their amazing child. Lawnmower parents completely erase any and all obstacles for their child so that their precious pumpkin can navigate smooth waters instead of learning how to correct course on choppy seas. As a teacher, this is the absolute worst. I can deal with parents being upset about their child suffering. It’s natural for parents to want to protect their children from any and all harm. However, I cannot deal with parents bulldozing the ground so children have nothing to be upset about.

If parents, our greatest assets, don’t teach their children valuable coping skills, how will our next generation deal when these problems befall them?

Any good teacher will tell you that their goals for their students have little to do with content matter. As a teacher, my biggest concern is not if my students can leave my class reciting Shakespeare. Rather, I care that they learn valuable skills like teamwork, resiliency, and discipline that they can carry over into whatever career they choose later in life. With lawnmower parents, these important skills become a wistful dream – not a tangible reality.

If all challenges are erased, how will these students gain the grit needed when things don’t go their way?

Lawnmower parents are creating a false land of delusion that is sure to set our students up for failure. The next generation will surely endure relationship woes, financial issues, and work troubles. If parents, our greatest assets (and, at times, our biggest nemesis), don’t teach their children valuable coping skills, how will our next generation deal when these problems befall them? Lawnmower parents are creating a crop of children who will be out of luck when life gives them lemons. And that, my friend, is a tough pill to swallow.

I have witnessed firsthand the effects of lawnmower parents and let me tell you… it is not pretty. I’ve had students cry over having to wait 5 minutes to eat lunch, having a ball lightly skim their knee, and seeing the playground with their eyes, but not being able to play on it yet. With each of these students, I have a long talk about resiliency and each time, they look up at me with large, terror-filled eyes. The concept of being a buoyant human being is lost on them, and it is clear that this is the first time they are hearing how to cope with something. And each time, I think the same thing: Thanks lawnmower parents. I need you to work with me, NOT against me.

While this epidemic may seem comical to some, I can assure you that it is very real and very frightening. We need to let our kids fall, fail, and figure out how to stand back up. We can give them the tools to get back up, but we also need to let them practice this important skill. As educators, it is our duty to equip our students with traits that will get them far in life. So stand aside, lawnmower parents. I’m not letting you raise a wave of children who will be paralyzed by insurmountable hurdles. You can try to knock us down, but us teachers are extremely used to trudging up mountains.

One of my recent supply duties was in a Student Success (SS) class. For the more mature group reading this, Student Success is a relatively new component of today's school system, and it is chock full of Lawnmower children. Basically, SS is special education for students without a biological impairment. While students with an IEP (Individual Education Plan) have a diagnosed, documented learning disability that disrupts their learning, SS students are identified by teachers and administrators through anecdotal observation that prompts a referral to the SS teacher for assistance. The disruption to their learning is just as profound as Special Ed students, and although small number will have an undiagnosed LD, the main difference relates to "nurture" rather than "nature". The whole idea of Student Success relates back to the notion of credit recovery, or put in layman's terms, a second chance to earn a credit when the first chance was impaired in some manner, be it consciously decided (like not attending, not doing or submitting the work) or through circumstance (suffering major influences outside of school). As I see it, the SS room is profoundly impacted by the children of Lawnmower Parents because, IMHO, they cannot handle life when they aren't calling the shots.

Don't misunderstand me, I am not for a second insinuating that ALL children making use of the SS room are a problem, but just like the classroom, there is a growing number that are sucking an inordinate amount of educational energy like some intergalactic Black Hole. The best way to explain this to those who have not spent time in the education system is to trumpet their prototypical angst, "It's not my fault!" or "I don't wanna do it!"

(Cue the sarcasm)

Of course it's not! That's because your parents have removed all potential obstacles from your life in their distorted attempt to "protect" you, but in doing so, they've robbed you of the life lessons that come with failure and adversity, reinforcing your attitude that you and your whims are the only thing things that matter. To make matters worse, when you do choose poorly and have an opportunity to learn through the "School of Hard Knocks", your parents raise the roof with accusations of incompetence, neglect and unprofessionalism in an attempt to prove how much they love you. All of those efforts simply degrade the integrity of your teacher in your eyes, and reinforce your narcissistic viewpoint.

Where this all hits me straight in the gut is a conversation I had recently with a young teacher whom I feel has their heart in the right place and displays some incredible teaching potential. They were completely despondent about the education system as it stands right now, so much so that they were seriously considering changing careers. Were that to happen, IMHO, we would lose a really good one.

Way back when I first started my career, there was a small poster that circulated that contained a set of rules accredited to Bill Gates, and its message attested that school was a Utopian society that in no way, shape, or form resembled "real" life. The Gates rules were meant as a warning that the "real" world was not interested in the least that you "don't wanna do it" if you wished to continue to earn enough cash to put a roof over your head and food in your fridge. While some of the more mature readers of this post will nod in agreement with Gates' rules, the reality is that they contain some truths that are undeniable, some truths that are negotiable, and some truths that don't really apply any longer. 

Lawnmower parents don't like Gates' rules. 

I'll sum this whole rant up with acknowledging that my number of years on this planet has significantly skewed my perspective of all of this and these thoughts are my opinions, not rules. If you've made it this far and you still don't agree with me, that's perfectly fine with me, and I'm in no way offended by that because I'm really quite okay with people disagreeing with what I say.

For the sake of the future education of my grandchildren, I hope that we as a society start to tell people like Lawnmower Parents to stop creating problems just because they don't wish to do the hard parenting when their child chooses poorly. As a friend said to me as we talked about this very subject, "The inmates are running the asylum" and that scares the bejeezus out of me.

Here's hoping this too shall pass.