Maybe part of my opinion comes from my experience with the young kids we work with at preschool. It is very obvious which children have involved parents and which ones don't and it's sad. We get kids whose parents just open the door upstairs and just send them downstairs on their own and we rarely see the parent and usually those are the kids who don't know the beginning of their ABC's or counting or even how to interact.

On the flip side, we do have those parents who hang around way too long and actually end up upsetting the child more than helping them but overall the child is bright and well rounded.

I think the issue we have here is we are being very black and white ... If you help your child you are a helicopter parent who is ruining their spoiled child and if you encourage "do it yourself" then you are neglecting your kids. Neither is true most likely and there is a lot of grey area... And what works depends on the parent but more so depends on the child you have. There is no one size fits all for child rearing and you may think you have the market cornered but faced with a child with different needs or personality... You may be up a creek lol