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My mother, my secretary

It all begins with what one pediatrician, Dr. Ralph López, who specializes in adolescents, calls "overindulged-child syndrome." "One of my pet peeves is to hear parents praising a child’s accomplishments as if they’re professionals," he says. "A child who draws very well is a great artist, a child who dances very well is a great dancer. That implies that they are able to replicate every good performance. Instead, I’d like to hear parents praise the event, what they did. That’s a very different compliment; it doesn’t fill the child with expectations of being a great artist." He adds, "You’ve built up the popinjay to the point where they don’t have the credentials and skill to prove it."

Today parents can’t bring themselves to do anything as forceful as refusing to give kids Halloween candy, which Larry David did on a recent Curb Your Enthusiasm episode, nor can they be as hilariously indifferent as Malcolm’s parents are on Malcolm in the Middle. They just lather on the praise, layer after layer. After a while, neither they nor the young "popinjay" remembers what’s underneath.

"If kids expect a lot of external praise, that’s an unrealistic expectation in the real world," says Dr. Angela Seracini, director of the Disruptive Behavior Disorders Clinic in Pediatric Psychiatry at the Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital of New York–Presbyterian. "I’ve seen it in personal life, that certain people expect that other people are always going to be noticing them, and if it doesn’t happen they get disappointed."

TMPR parents pump up their child’s self-esteem into an enormous vacuum, so the kid feels pretty great, but has done nothing in particular to feel great about. Psychologists have been trying to address that one for a while now: "People are making the point that self-esteem is a result — not a cause — of a good performance," says Dr. McHugh.

"The self-esteem movement gained a lot of momentum just in the last decade, where it was a big deal in schools and in the workplace to praise people for their efforts," Ann Murphy says. "There were all these happy-face signs and good jobs, and they would get trophies for everything. This is what a lot of experts are saying has gotten berserk."

Meanwhile, our popular culture looks like a TMPR triage area. When kids hear from Mom and Dad that they’re bound to be the next Donald Trump, it’s no wonder they experience not just disappointment but total shock when the Donald tells them they won’t be. Murphy and her husband, Stephen, CEO of Rodale publishing company, say they always talk about the sense of entitlement now characteristic of new applicants to jobs in their field. "There’s a whole generation of young people who think they can make top dollar when they walk in the door — and they don’t want to do certain things," Murphy says. "There is definitely a sense I get that this entitlement is pretty pervasive."

The logical extension of this kind of upbringing comes in the workplace, which TMPR sufferers approach as if it were akin to summer camp — yet another "enrichment experience" paid for by their parents. Grunt work is not a concept that resonates with them: if Daddy’s a partner at Goldman Sachs, don’t you have the same authority? "If you’re going to the private schools, there’s a certain level of success your parents have accomplished, and one of the problems that comes up is a lot of stuff is done for you — there are resources, tutors, accommodations made because the school will bend for you, there are concessions made by teachers who want to help the kids," says Dr. López. "Kids get a sense that those accomplishments are theirs. The kid who’s doing okay in school has some learning issues, but Mom or Dad are doing secretarial background work — that kid is going to fall on his tail end in college because Mom or Dad is doing the secretarial work so well it goes unnoticed," he adds. "Parents help kids so much. They say, ‘You are terrific’ — no matter what. If the kid does badly, parents will say, ‘Nobody in the class got it, must be a bad teacher.’ I tell parents, ‘If you are your kid’s secretary, I need you fired by third year.’ And then I’ve watched them in college, and all of a sudden they graduate, they’re wearing suits for the first time, and they don’t even know how to do an insurance submission because all of that has been done for them. They don’t even have bank accounts. I have one mom, she sent her kid off to boarding school and she would go up there to do his laundry. I said, ‘You’re joking.’ She said, ‘But he has so many things to do.’

"To me, if you’re in a boarding school, you do your own laundry," López continues. "If a kid has an inner-directed style, ‘I gotta do it because it needs to be done,’ that kid will thrive and go and do well in the workforce. The opposite is the kid who doesn’t have that confidence and goes to a certain school and hides and parties — redo Animal House and you become Bluto." The conclusion, he says, is obvious: "Kids who have had too much reinforcement don’t do as well in the workplace."

‘Delusional behavior’

Among the most excruciating of American Idol’s excruciating moments are those in which parents greet their booted babies, offering reassurance that the judges were dead wrong. "You’re amazing, they don’t know what they’re talking about," the parents coo. In an age when parents are not able to confront their kids’ shortcomings, it sometimes seems like Simon Cowell is the only one who will.

"Every single one of these people genuinely believed they were the best singers in America," said Cowell with a laugh on a recent show. "We have thousands of contestants who think they’re fantastic, but in every year, it’s always the same. We’ll find only one or two really good people. That’s a horrible statistic." Randy Jackson, another of the three judges, added, "It’s delusional behavior. Everybody thinks they’re better than they are." More than the hopes of seeing genuine talent, it’s the drama of recalibration viewers tune in for. When contestants enter the judging room with dreams of their first platinum record and Us Weekly cover, the viewers are titillated: here comes Simon Cowell!

On one episode this season, a frumpy, bespectacled Midwesterner sat between Jackson and Cowell, singing "I Was Meant for You," while tentatively stroking their shoulders. A few minutes into the performance, Cowell stopped her and said, "I don’t think you were meant for us," to which she coyly replied, "What do you want?"

"Someone who can sing in tune," said Cowell.

Cowell’s biting lines make the viewer feel oddly cozy inside. It’s a wave of relief to hear him tell it like it is. Besides, any hurt he inflicts will be over quickly — what fuels the show’s fire is the rejects’ determination not to give up, not to believe anything negative they hear. Because while Cowell is convincing, one harsh line isn’t going to undo a lifetime of TMPR.

After the judging, the cameras catch up with the contestants, who argue through their tears, "I know I can sing! My friends love listening to me!" Slumping in the elevator, they shout, "Don’t tell me I’m not working hard enough!" Or they croak to host Ryan Seacrest, "I was too much — I was too good." The best are those who, like Jonathan Rea, the water-thrower, refuse to leave the room, thinking of any half-brained excuse they can muster. "I missed a few notes, but I can do better," one scrawny, tonally challenged contestant whined. "I’d say you missed 99 out of 100," responded Cowell.

Donald Trump’s ripostes on The Apprentice are equally gratifying. At the end of an early-February episode, Trump sat at the table with his colleagues and the losing team, debriefing them. "You’re surprised to be beaten, aren’t you?" he said to the manager of the team. She nodded, and launched into an ode-to-myself speech, before asking what she could have done better. "What could you have done better? Used common sense," he replied bluntly. Later in the episode, he asked another member of the team whether she thought the manager had failed. "You’re not putting me on the hot seat?" she said, as if in shock. "That’s what life is all about," replied Trump.

Dr. Lauren Levine, a psychologist, agrees that these shows are "speaking to some need in the general public." And kids seem to be responding to seeing actual criticism on screen, if not yet at home. The truth hurts — so good. After 30 years of being told we are beautiful, we’re ready for our dressing-down. The culture is primed for some brutal honesty, some real judgment. Kids want to see other kids being yelled at, and parents want to see others doing the yelling.

Gene Gardino, the head counselor at a Manhattan private school, says that kids tell him all the time that they’d like their parents to let them know what they’re doing wrong, but they don’t want their parents to be blunt and mean about it. That’s the trick that post-TMPR parents will have to learn to master. For now, vicarious thrills will have to do: "I think it’s a lot better coming from Trump than coming from their own parents," Gardino says. As López puts it: "They may watch these programs because they like to see the pathos of humanity. It’s brutal honesty — for someone else."

This story originally ran in the New York Observer.