Why is it parents think they help their kids by pretending things are better than they are?

Each day was a challenge of enjoyment, and he [Hemingway] would plan it out as a field general plans a campign.

He [Hemingway] used a stand-up work place he had fashioned out of the top of of a bookcase near his bed. His portable typewriter was snugged in there and papers were spread along the top of the bookcase on either side of it. He used a reading board for longhand writing.

Ernest Hemingway was always uneasy in New York and liked being there less than in any other city he frequented.

Of course we all have our limits, but how can you possibly find your boundaries unless you explore as far and as wide as you possibly can? I would rather fail in an attempt at something new and uncharted than safely succeed in a repeat of something I have done.

From the time I read my first Hemingway work, The Sun Also Rises, as a student at Soldan High School in St. Louis, I was struck with an affliction common to my generation: Hemingway Awe.

Why is it parents think they help their kids by pretending things are better than they are?