How can I have raised a teenage spoilt brat?

And the children’s party ante only kept getting upped: a few years after my kids left primary school, one mother I knew invited 10 children to Disneyland Paris for a long weekend. This, on top of the daily grind of scheduling play dates and sleepovers between Kumon maths, Mandarin classes and judo.

Even the least helicopter-minded of us was hardwired to inject structure and stimulation into second of our child’s day; no wonder some of them never quite got the hang of either when they were required to stand on their own two feet.

As Peter Gray, research professor in the Department of Psychology at Boston College, wrote recently in Psychology Today, children “learn the most important lessons in life from other children, not from adults” — and yet in we weighed, hell-bent on cushioning them from every conceivable blow.

We didn’t trust them to survive the slings and arrows of childhood, we made them the centres of our universe and encouraged them to think they could have it all — in short, we taught them to be selfish. Meanwhile, everything they were exposed to on TV and online shored up the belief that the good life was a standard issue, inalienable right.

‘Kippers’

Nell was indignant when I told her about this article: “Condescendingly accusing younger generations of being entitled, narcissistic and lazy is nothing new,” she snapped.

“But what makes promoting this stereotype even worse is the knowledge that my friends and I are facing a lower relative starting wage — thanks to the fallout of a financial crash we played no part in creating — a housing market that’s pretty much impenetrable, and ever-increasing university tuition fees.”

Fair point. According to think-tank The Resolution Centre, millennials earn a fifth less than we did at their age, yet by the time they’re 30 they will have spent £40,000 more on rent and be 50 per cent less likely than we were to own their own home. No wonder that 48 per cent of 20 to 24 year-olds still live with their parents — a percentage that’s been steadily rising since the Nell was born.

Turns out that we protected our children against everything except the future that is keeping them ‘kippers’ — kids in parents’ pockets. That said, would it kill them to make us a cup of tea, while they’re there?