<p>Insomniac here. Woke in middle of night, so Heck, before going back to sleep, might as well reply!</p>
<p>Zagat, I think your there is a variety of reasons for parental denial. (1) I think in some cases, the parents subconsciously know that something’s not right, but feel overwhelmed when it comes to remedy, and/or guilty that they haven’t been singlehandedly able to correct the problem(s); the self-protective reaction to that can be denial; (2) parents who themselves were raised in a family whose dynamics were defined by denial, tend to pass that dyamic long in their own formed families; (3) In the “apple doesn’t fall far from the tree” dep’t, some parents were indulged themselves as children, therefore have no pattern of child-rearing save what was given to <em>them</em>; (4) what reinforces that last reality, is being in a GROUP of parents & kids (e.g., a class in a school) where most of the parents (as children) were indulged, & that is currently being passed along to progeny; This pattern I fought all during my younger D’s 9 previously elem. years, & unluckily now in her freshman year in H.S. [She tells me she is the “least spoiled” of all the freshmen; I believe it.]</p>
<p>(To shorten the above, #(3) is cluelessness, #(4) is conformity/GroupThink.)</p>
<p>But the Fifth possibility is parental pathology, which takes a larger role than perhaps any of us tend to believe. We know of a family in which at least one of the major figures manifests Narcissistic Personality Disorder; the way this gets translated in child-rearing is that one of the children is artificially imbued with superhuman, superior traits which no classmate of the child’s can supposedly equal, let alone surpass. In this case, the <em>result</em> of the parental behavior is denial, rather than the cause – but the consequences end up being the same. [When “Susie” “under”-performs, giant excuses & rationales follow, creating elaborate reasons why she “would have” gotten first place, or whatever, if such-and-such an event hadn’t happened, etc.] Said student will enter college with absolutely no realistic self-image – which is dangerous, in my view.</p>
<p>Finally, Sixth but not least, I think that some of the denial to which you refer is indirectly fallout from our hurried parental lifestyles. There is so much less “family time” (slower, considered, interactive, observant) than “when I was a kid.” In many cases, I’ll bet that the Denial is “genuine,” in that the parents aren’t around enough, nor interactive enough, to observe what is really going on with their kids.</p>
<p>End of rant.
Sleeptime now.</p>