The biologist and intellectual E. O. Wilson was once asked what represented the most hindrance to the development of children; his answer was the soccer mom [helicopter parent]....They try to eliminate the trial and error from children's lives and transform them into nerds working on preexisting (parent-compatible) maps of reality. They are good students, but nerds--that is, they are like computers, except slower. Further, they are totally untrained to handle ambiguity....Provided we have the right type of rigor, we need randomness, mess, adventures, uncertainty, self-discovery, near-traumatic episodes, all those things that make life worth living.