The kids with the best résumés kept calling home in a panic
A former Stanford dean watched a decade of high-achieving freshmen arrive, and the accomplishments weren't the real story.
For ten years as Stanford's dean of freshmen, Julie Lythcott-Haims watched a pattern repeat: incoming students had extraordinary transcripts, and a striking number of them seemed unable to function without a parent managing the details underneath. They'd never lost a match they weren't allowed to lose, filed a form their mother hadn't pre-filled, or handled a professor's disappointment alone.
She traces it to parents who, with entirely loving intentions, had spent nearly two decades absorbing every obstacle before their kid could hit it: scheduling, negotiating, appealing grades, smoothing over conflicts. The accomplishments were often as much the parents' project management as the student's own effort.
What arrived on campus instead of resilience, in her account, was anxiety: students who'd never practiced recovering from a real setback because none had ever been allowed to land.
Her question for parents isn't whether you're helping enough. It's whether you're quietly doing the one job your kid actually needs the practice reps for.