I think a lot of the problems that both kids and parents have these days are that parents are so competitive with their kids.
It is a fine line because we all want our kids to succeed, but a lot of parents aren’t just hoping their kids have success for their kids’ sake, it goes well beyond that to the point the parents feel like failures if their kid has a setback.
I think this is related because it is really tough for parents to accept when their kids are different because it feels like failure instead of finding what is cool and unique with the kid. Like your engineer friend.