We can’t protect our children from everything, even if we really, really want to. It’s tempting when we see our child crying over a scraped knee to bundle him up in a blanket and keep him in our arms forever, where nothing will ever be able to hurt him again.

But we all know that’s not the right thing to do. Kids need to go through hard times. They learn from them, they get stronger, and they become better people. We would never have become the people we are today if we hadn’t screwed up. Our kids need to make those mistakes, too.

But it’s not just helicopter parenting that does more harm than good. As it turns out, a lot of things we think of as “common sense” ways to keep our kids safe don’t keep them safe at all. A lot of the time, they actually make things worse.

[Read the full article at Parent.co]