'Lawnmower parents' latest disturbing trend

Earlier this year, we wrote about a trend in England that no doubt raises alarm among certain American parents, who we’ll discuss later.

While our school playgrounds all contain UL-approved soft plastic equipment atop ground-rubber flooring, some British school have replaced that with stacks of two-by-fours, crates and loose bricks, mud pits, tire swing, log stumps and workbenches with hammers and saws.

The idea, generated by the folks who survived the Blitz 78 years ago, is to teach children to handle risk safely.

Under adult supervision, children learn how to deal with fires, use knives, scissors and sharp-edged tape dispensers.

Sure enough, parents on this side of the Atlantic took exactly the opposite tack, first becoming “helicopter” parents and moving on to a new trend, “lawnmower parents.”

The Weareteachers.com site recently included an anonymous essay by a teacher decrying lawnmower parents who “go to whatever lengths necessary to prevent their child from having to face adversity, struggle or failure.”

The post, which has been shared thousands of times on Facebook, included a story about a father, dressed in suit and tie, who dropped off a water bottle for his child at her school.

“Remy kept texting me that she needed it. I texted back, ‘Don’t they have water fountains at your school?’ But I guess she just had to have it out of the bottle. He laughed, as if to say, ‘Teenagers, am I right?”

One can only cringe at the results if children in such a generation should it face challenges like those faced by their great-grandparents.