Wimpy kids?

American parents tend to coddle their children, according to Hara Estroff Marano , an editor at Psychology Today and author of “ A Nation of Wimps: The High Cost of Invasive Parenting .” They don’t want their kids to ever feel bad, she wrote. They become over-involved and will do everything to prevent them from failing.

In her book she writes: “Behold the wholly sanitized childhood, without skinned knees or the occasional C in history! Kids need to learn that you need to feel bad sometimes. We learn through experience, and we learn especially through bad experiences. Through disappointment and failure we learn how to cope.”

In an interview with TIME magazine last summer, she offered this advice to parents:

1. Back off and give kids the leeway to try things and demonstrate competence.
2. Let kids play freely without monitoring.
3. Eat dinner together at least five nights a week.

What do you think? Are we really raising a nation of wimps?