Why are today’s children so helpless? Look at their parents

From tying shoelaces to tracking every move, overprotective parenting can deny children the experiences they need to become independent Recently, a friend went to buy trainers for her 14-year-old and was surprised to discover that most of the suitable styles had Velcro fastenings.

When she asked about proper laces, the sales assistant simply shrugged and said teenagers increasingly struggle to tie them.

We laughed and then we both went rather quiet because I remembered primary school teachers talking about first-graders who can’t dress themselves, fasten buttons, pack their things, tie their shoelaces or sometimes even manage a trip to the toilet without an adult.

And it doesn’t end with primary school as I’ve seen parents tie the shoelaces of perfectly capable 12- and 13-year-olds, carry their rucksacks and generally treat them like particularly honored guests.

I would love to adopt the traditional middle-aged complaint: “At their age, we were already…” but, unfortunately, that won’t work, because I’m one of those mothers myself.

In fifth grade, I took the tram to school alone and there was no mobile phone and certainly no parents’ group chat, so I got on the tram, travelled to school and came home.

Somehow, I survived.

Now I have a child of my own, and repeating that educational experiment seems considerably more frightening.

Perhaps that contradiction explains much of what’s happened to us.

We want our children to become independent, but preferably in a safe environment, under CCTV surveillance, with geolocation switched on and an adult never too far away.

Read more A generation of complete idiots? How AI is changing our children A British survey of nearly 2,000 families found that children today are allowed to play outside unsupervised at an average age of 10.8.

Their parents had been allowed to do so at about 9.7, thus more than half of parents said they gave their children such freedom later than they themselves had received it.

Why have we become like this? After all, the 1990s can hardly be remembered as a wonderfully safe and sheltered period, yet children spent hours outside, cycled to school, went to the shops and somehow found their way home without the equivalent of an electronic ankle bracelet.

Perhaps our parents were no less worried, but they simply lacked the technology to worry about us in real time.