Helicopter parenting ruins children
Do you ever wonder why many college students today are pathetic snowflakes who are totally incapable of dealing with opposing ideas? Do you wonder why many college students today must run to a "safe space" to literally cuddle with stuffed animals and play with coloring books when someone is on campus with an idea they disagree with? Most of all, do you wonder why many college students feel "unsafe" when opposing ideas are present? Here is a perfect example of how this mentality is created.
Is it strange for a grown man to be handing business cards to children to direct them to a website to help them learn to reduce their tax burden? Sure. It would be smarter to hand the cards to their parents. None of these kids will remember this in a decade or so when they are in the workforce.
But to involve the police as if this man is some sort of threat is absurd. The proper response, if any, is to roll your eyes and move on, not calling the cops. This creates unnecessary paranoia and divides our society. It creates a fear of the "other" that feeds the mentality that we have to empower government to run our lives for us, severely restricting due process and trampling on our civil liberties.
Worse yet, this is how you instill a "safe space" mentality into a child, so they become hypersensitive crybabies as adults. We fabricate danger everywhere, making children terrified all the time. Eventually, they will learn from our fears. When they are rioting and burning down buildings because they are so outraged that someone would dare disagree with them, we can trace it back to helicopter parenting. These sheltered children were never given the coping skills to deal with life as it comes, to deal with unexpected changes that mess up their plans, or the problem-solving skills to deal with things that Mommy and Daddy always handled for them.
Stop ruining your children. Stop hovering. Stop doing everything for them. Stop being overprotective. Stop seeing danger everywhere. Teach your children the skills they need to cope with life, solve problems and handle things they find offensive. When they are adults, they will thank you for it.