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American coddle
These days, a growing number of young people are suffering from Too Much Positive Reinforcement: The belief, against all available evidence, that one is meant for Special Things
BY ALEXANDRA WOLFE


As the droplets ran down his face, American Idol’s resident rapier, Simon Cowell, looked incredulous. After a window-shattering rendition of Shakira’s "Underneath Your Clothes," a rejected contestant, 18-year-old Jonathan Rea, of Houston, had walked over to the judges’ table as if to shake Cowell’s hand, and instead hurled a cup of water at him.

It may have been a watershed moment — not just for Fox’s cheesy talent contest, going strong with 29 million viewers in its third season, but for a culture awash in mediocrity convinced of its genius. Rea’s rage and disbelief at receiving criticism is all too familiar, now that the most coddled generation in American history has come of age.

Like everyone from Paris Hilton, whose attorneys confidently announced in the middle of her sex-tape fiasco that "Hilton is a model and actress [and] is at the beginning of what she had hoped would be a long and prosperous career," to George W. Bush, the president who wears his below-average credentials like a badge of honor, Rea is suffering from what one might call Too Much Positive Reinforcement: the belief, against all available evidence, that one is meant for Special Things.

TMPR has now officially reached epidemic proportions. How else to explain the legions of the talent-free who wait in line for days for a chance to show their stuff to Cowell and company — then are stunned to be told they don’t make the grade? After decades of upper-middle-class parenting designed to shield Junior from all possible failure and any honest judgment of his talents, it’s no wonder we need television shows like American Idol and its fellow showcase for TMPR victims, The Apprentice. These programs are delivering the spanking — sorry, the time-out — that our culture of bloated self-evaluation subconsciously craves. Their success signals that we may be reaching the end of a long national delusion. There is simply not room enough at the top these days for everyone raised to believe they belong there — and, deep down, we all know it.

Case in point: our president and his Democratic rivals — all classic victims of Too Much Positive Reinforcement. Take George W. Bush, for example. Through years of poor school marks, alcohol abuse, and business failures, Bush coasted through, both he and his parents oblivious to any shortcomings. Last October, Barbara Bush said on Larry King Live, "A lot of people, mostly the press, ask if George W. was a rascal when he was growing up. And the answer is, of course not. He was a perfect child." Mrs. Bush was even further surprised to learn that Democrats were — gasp! — saying nasty things about their Republican rival. "It gets a little old when 10 grown men run around the country not talking about what they’re going to do, but knocking my precious, courageous, brilliant son," she said on the show.

Then there’s Howard Dean’s much-publicized WWE Smackdown press conference — the "How could anyone say no to me?" rant. Slouching poll results were swept aside like yesterday’s bad report card; Dean went into New Hampshire saying, "We really are going to win this nomination, aren’t we?" Voters ran through the options: shake your head no and give him a little blanket and hot tea? Slap him upside the head? Or, perhaps, sic Simon Cowell on him?

We’ve become so inured to the idea that a person’s self-assessment need not be changed by a little thing like repeated and utter failure that no one was the least surprised when Joe Lieberman took so long to throw in the towel. Before New Hampshire, he said, "The people of New Hampshire put me in the ring, and that’s where we’re going to stay." Jon Stewart on The Daily Show put it best: "When did our elections become the Special Olympics? You’re not all winners. Not everybody gets a hug. You guys got crushed."

With two — and now three — generations of privileged parents "correcting" the sternness (or imagined sternness) of their own upbringing by telling their children they can do anything they put their minds to, upper-middle-class kids now routinely think they have no weaknesses, and that they have every right — not just every chance — to succeed.

"Kids will come in wanting to be a staff writer at Esquire right out of college," says Eliot Kaplan, editorial talent director for Hearst Magazines. "I had this girl come in from this failed dot-com one day — that was her only experience. I interviewed her and asked her how much money she wanted, and she said $300,000. I couldn’t help it — I laughed in her face." Kaplan adds: "We’re happy to bring them back to earth."

But the trip back down to earth is coming later and later. "When I was at Andover in the 1940s, one in every third kid would not make it," says Dr. Paul McHugh, head of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University. "Now in a school like that and even colleges, it’s really hard to fail out. They pick you up, prep you, dust you off."

It’s the work world that increasingly functions as the personal reality-check service for TMPR victims. "Imminent failure has been postponed for lots of people until they hit the bricks of having to work," says McHugh. "Competition for a paying job changes things, because it’s no longer Daddy’s tuition money that keeps you going."

Of course, even late-stage TMPR sufferers have an inkling somewhere inside that they’re not the next Leonardo da Vinci — maybe not even the next Leonardo DiCaprio. A nonstop stream of parental praise is now seen by psychologists as a parenting strategy guaranteed to backfire. "Kids will see through it," says Ann Pleshette Murphy, parenting correspondent for ABC’s Good Morning America and a columnist for Family Circle. "If you’re full of baloney when you’re praising them to the hills, they begin to distrust your praise. They begin to think that they’re the center of the universe and they can always get what they want. But I think down deep they know that’s not true. It creates a false sense of who they are, and it can really erode your relationship with your kid." The final insult, according to Murphy: "They’ll blame you when reality hits."

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Issue Date: February 27 - March 4, 2004
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