Megan is a 23-year-old who grew up with a great deal of anxiety about her school performance. Her parents admit, they were too involved and consider themselves helicopter parents.

But now, as Megan is moving into young adulthood, she is highly sensitive to any demand or issue that doesn’t fit her view of life. Her coping skills are lacking.

Megan’s parents look back and think, did we make excuses for hr too often, bail her out when she needed to feel consequences? Did we blame her teachers, rescue her when she felt bad too many times?

These are good questions to ask. Coddled children often become entitled ones. They expect other people to constantly fix their problems. Problems are externalized– due to someone else’s actions versus personal responsibility.

What’s the fix?

Stop coddling and empowering them to be victims. Shielding them from the realities of the world does not help them cope and build resiliency. It it through disagreement, we find out what we believe. It is through working through differences that we learn to get along with others who don’t think and feel as we do. It is often through struggle that we learn to be strong and make corrections in our ways of doing things. Failure is part of building resilience.

Universities are supposed to be places to prepare students for the real world. Instead, we are extending this helicopter parenting to the campuses, creating safe spaces, micro aggressions and demanding students who no longer exercise common sense. Talk to your young adults about this influence and the long term effects of “safe spaces.” Political correctness has run amuck and creating entitled people who can’t cope with life.

So parents, look at your influence now. Tell your children to deal with that difficult teacher, the kid who doesn’t think the same, the neighbor who chides them for bad behavior. Encourage them to work through their own problems. Stop doing for them. Think how you became a problem-solver –no one rescued you from the real world.

Tell your college kids to stop whining and focus on their studies. Question the policies of universities and colleges that are offended by food that is racist (true story!). Parents, we need a hard look as to our contributions to the problem of raising entitled kids. Where we can make a difference now, let’s do it. Stop coddling and rescuing.