I’m going to take a wild guess.

The reason we have college campuses where it is costing $22,000 and up a year for students to earn degrees in political correctness that are rife with “safety zones” and comfort animals have to do with two phenomena being called “helicopter parents” and “snowplow parents” by social behavioral wonks.

“Helicopter parents” was the phrase given those parents who always seem to be hovering around their kids.

They orchestrate their every move by scheduling their kids’ formative years as if they were booking agents for a seven-day whirl wind trip to see every European country.

The goal is to push them to be successful by building their resumes, making sure they fit the expected repertoire of experiences “to succeed”, and to make sure they aren’t failures by constantly driving them, figuratively and literally.

They insist on participatory trophies.

“Snowplow parents” clear away obstacles for their kids so they don’t fail.

They leave nothing to chance.

They are careful to mask their efforts so that their kids are clueless about what they are doing.

They bulldoze down challenges long before their kids arrive on the scene.

They demand that there are guaranteed most valuable trophies for their kids.

An example of snowplow parenting is the college admissions scandal that recently wrapped up.

“Snowplow parenting” differs from the old-fashioned “birthright” parenting that many with money assume their kid is entitled by “buying” a guaranteed admission by writing a check for $200,000 to fund some obscure college department.

That’s because they want their interference on behalf of their kids to be on the down low so their offspring can continue to be clueless.

The only way to do that, of course, is bribery.

I remember my grandmother expressing the belief that Dr. Spock (for those under the age of 30, that is not a reference to Mr. Spock of Star Trek fame) was out of his gourd.

It was because of what the good doctor wrote in his child care books, but the fact he actually believed people needed to be told what they had to do in order to be good parents.

In defense of Dr. Spock, by the mid-1960s many in this country didn’t have the life experience that my grandmother had.

Edna Towle was of the generation that was on the tail end of settling the West.

She was left to run a cattle ranch and raise seven kids in the depth of the Great Depression — without benefit of most modern conveniences, including indoor plumbing and electricity — when her alcoholic husband deserted her.

One tends to sharpen oneself mentally and emotionally when you are literally struggling to survive to keep a roof over your kids’ heads as well as to clothe and feed them.

Rest assured, grandmother had no time to be a “helicopter parent” by shadowing and controlling her kids for their every waking moment.

Nor did she devote her life to snowplowing obstacles out of their way.

Kids that learn to carry their own weight, find out at an early age the value of a strong work ethic — a key trait if you want to not be hungry and unsheltered — and understand there are things that can hurt you in the world, the better chances they have of being a success in life.

It is a cruel world.

The sooner you can grasp its injustices, learn to buffer yourself against them, and realize you have the power within yourself not to get sucked in by self-wallowing and self-defeat the better off you will end up being.

A prime example is Alfredo Quiñones-Hinojosa.

As a young migrant, he landed a job in the fields of Mendota near the heart of the San Joaquin Valley.

He was exposed to hard work on top of disdain, discrimination, and living conditions that were often more Third World than being anyway close to American expectations.

Such negative forces along with obstacles and demeaning treatment followed him when he moved to Stockton and enrolled at Delta College.

This was while he was still doing manual labor cleaning ship tanks at the Port of Stockton to support himself and his family.

The demeaning treatment he received hurt but it also made him stronger.

Today, Quiñones-Hinojosa, who started his medical career at Johns Hopkins University, is now a world renowned neurosurgeon with the Mayo Clinic.

He leads a brain tumor stem cell research team seeking to find a cure for cancer.

If you read his book “Becoming Dr. Q” you will see that he came to the conclusion he was fortunate as a 4-year-old who came to the United States from Mexico with his parents not to have as such a difficult start as most immigrants.

Rest assured, his parents were not “helicopter parents” or “snowplow parents.”

They clearly had a difficult and hard life.

Yet they were able to impart values and instill in their son what was needed to deal with adverse and unfriendly situations so he could succeed in the world.

“Snowplow parents” rob kids of one of some of the most valuable lessons you can ever receive — failure.

You learn more from failure than success.

While that may strike some as mumbo jumbo about character building you can’t withstand firestorms unless your mettle has been forged by fire.

It’s little wonder more young adults in college seem overwhelmed by new challenges and threatened by different viewpoints after performing almost flawlessly in the surreal world crafted by their parents.

The real world isn’t populated by clones that think, act, and look the way you do.

It is also fraught with obstacles along with pressure.

What some parents do to their kids is akin to raising a bear cub in captivity and then when they reach adulthood turning them loose in the wild to fend for themselves. 

If they manage to survive, they certainly won’t thrive.

It is, most of the time, a dog eat dog world where those most equipped emotionally and with necessary skills survive.

If you can’t deal with the simple sound of other dogs barking or even their presence, then you’re in for a rude awakening.

 Kids are supposed to skin their knees and hearts.

That’s how kids learn to deal with adversity, challenges, and a world that is not a mirror image of the one created for them.

At the same time kids need to day dream and be able to goof off and be, for want of a better term, “a kid.”

Both are key to growing stronger emotionally and physically but also essential if you want to succeed in life.

And that success is not judged by an Ivy League education, how many participation trophies you collect, whether you follow the pack, and how many other people you can find on the planet that you agree with 100 percent.

Helicopter and snowplow parents end up taking pebbles of sand and creating mirrors and not windows as they try to shape their children’s future.

They are so intent on creating perfect square pegs that they rob their children of achieving success on their own terms.

They miss out on — for want of better wording — “self-growth experiences” that are critical in laying the foundation for adults that are much more effective and successful.

Kids need to find out what they are on the pegboard of life — square, circle, triangle, octagon, or whatever.

And just like the toddler trying to push a square block through a circular hole, it needs to be a hit and miss process.

You learn by learning.

Not by being told.

And certainly not by having every obstacle cleared out of your path.

This column is the opinion of editor, Dennis Wyatt, and does not necessarily represent the opinions of The Bulletin or 209 Multimedia. He can be reached at dwyatt@mantecabulletin.com