Funny Newspaper Column...

[Elric of Grans]

Hail Lurkers,

I just read this in today's paper: I think you parents may better appreciate this than I ;) Apologies for the Australianisms in it though.
__________

"Taking a cheap shot at parenting's competitive edge"
by Danny Katz
--- It's tough on kids in these competitive times, but even tougher on parents

Maddie is eight and she does tennis, Hannah is six and she does guitar, Declan is nine and he does swimming and piano and cub scouts --- and that's just on Mondays. Then on Tuesdays he does footy and violin and drama, the on Wednesdays he does art class and chess club and gym group, then on Thursdays he does leadlighting and glassblowing and fruit preservation, then on Fridays he just has a nice quiet one --- he does to the psychiatrist for his weekly stress therapy session.

Kids today are doing TOO many activities: every day they're doing wports things and music things and creative things and it's crazy, it's ridiculous, IT'S TOO MUCH --- the average kid had got a busier schedule than Eddie McGuire in Logies week. If they're not going to athletics, they're going to clarinet, if they're not going to clarinet, they're going to knitting, if they're not going to knitting, they're going to Thai kickbocking because all their friends keep teasing them about going to knitting.

And all this rushing around can't be good, it can't be healthy; those little bodies can't take that kind of relentless strain --- and I'm not talking about the kids, I'm talking about the parents who have to do all that driving. I know a woman with five kids, and she clocks up more kilometers in one hour than a taxi driver on a weekend shift: she doesn't step out of her car between 3pm and 9pm --- I don't want to tell you how she goes to the toilet but let's just say there's more than one use for a glove compartment and a reusable blackcurrant apple Juicy Pop bottle.

When I was a kid, we didn't do 8000 different things every day: we just went to school, we came home, and then we watched Gilligan's Island. THAT WAS ALL YOU DID --- unless you were a really cleaver, precocious, advanced child, and then you might watch Gilligan's Island AND McHale's Navy.

In those days, we had plenty of free time: we could just hang out with friends, or play with our toys, or sit alone in our rooms with a piece of tracing paper and an Archie comic book and trace pictures of Betty and Veronica without any clothes on... not that I ever did that... it was someone else I knew... and his name was... Daniel... Gratz.

But anyways, for some reason, modern parents have this ridiculous pressure to give their children lots of opportunities, and expose them to lots of stimuli, and pack every waking moment of their little lives with lessons and exercises and skill-learnin --- it's like a work-for-the-dole scheme, but in short pants and Pokemon T-Shirts.


Kids are being forced to grow up too fast; they don't have time to do kiddie-stuff anymore, like play imaginative games, or just stare a the clouds, or sit in their rooms with some tracing paper... and an Archie comic... like that guy... Daniel Gratz.

So why are parents doing this to their kids? Is it because they want to give their children every advantage in life as we head towards a future frought with challenges and uncertainty? No, I don't think so; I think it's because parents are naturally competitive creatures who want their kids to be better than everybody else's kids, and I base this claim on the irrefutable scientific fact that I AM AN INSECURE, JEALOUS, COMPETITIVE LITTLE PRAT OF A PARENT.

Yes, I suffer from a bad case of Competitive-Parent Syndrome: if someone else's kid is doing art classes, then I want MY kid to do an art class too --- her portraits of Humpty Dumpty should be entered in the Archibald Prize.

If someone else's kid is learning music, then MY kid should be learning music too --- my boy is going to be the next Mozart, even though Mozart was an unloved alcoholic whose body was dumped in a lime pit. If I hear little Johnny next door is doing Japanese Sashiko needlework, then I'm pannicking, I'm flipping out, I'm thinking to myself, "Oh my God, maybe Japanese Sashiko needlework is vital to a child's upbringing, maybe my kids are missing out on something important, MAYBE LITTLE JOHNNY WILL BE MORE SUCCESSFUL IN LIFE BECAUSE HE BENEFITED FROM THE JAPANESE SASHIKO NEEDLEWORK EXPERIENCE", and suddenly I'll want to sign my kids up for lessons, three times a week, in Japan.

I'm the most insecure, bitter, lealous, annoying parent EVER, but fortunately for me, my Comptitive-Parent Syndrome tends to clash with my Lazy-And-Cheap-Parent Complex so, in the end, my kids don't do much at all --- they just do piano and this wierd jazz-ballet/African tribal fusion dancing. Oh, and karate, too --- but that's just because their friends keep teasing them about the dancing.

[Fragbait]

Hail Elric, nice to post with you again.
(I have to catch up to your 10000 posts :P )

No, seriously, parents are under an enormous pressure nowadays...
Instead of having their kiddies do 1000 things, it would perhaps be appropriate to do sth with them together, like a picnic,
or a lesson about sexuality...

Just kidding. But a few hours of 'family time ' every day won't hurt, I think.

Greetings, Fragbait

[ShadowSeer]

Elric didnt you know its competitive, at first hint when your beloved wife gave birth that you would be doing things to make your kids want to chop you up into little bitty kebler elfs bits?

my parents did not have the time to do all that with me just make me chop wood go to the market and avoid the ruge when i was younger...

but on the other hand i probly would have loved it being competive doing the dancing and karate, piano{okay i play the violin} easier to master then the panio and able to carry when you running from the ruge it was drop everything and hide in the jungle for days on ends

[LavCat]

A couple days ago my child joined the lurkerlounge...that must say something.

[Jugalator]

A couple days ago my child joined the lurkerlounge...that must say something.

Yup, you have a smart child! ;)

[Nicodemus Phaulkon]

Behind the humor lies a truth, though. It's being discovered worldwide (with the first-world nations at least) that children are being subjected to far too much stress from "organized playtime". Definitely only a first-world issue, though... most of the rest of the world's children are more concerned with having enough food, finding shelter and dodging bullets. Isn't it interesting how your priorities change in those situations? <_<

However, for those of us lucky enough to have the leisure to discover new ways of developing a personal psychosis, this ranks right up there with the most successful. It's brought "Keeping up with the Joneses" to a brand new, sad level.

My own observations fell to a neighbor of mine: A mother of three unable to say the word "no". Involved in EVERYTHING that crossed her line-of-sight; her days were filled to the brim with activities, requirements and responsibilities. And THEN there were her kids, ferried around in their minivan which was on the road Monday to Saturday from 7am to 9pm. Harried and harassed, overbooked and overwhelmed, she finally saw the light when her oldest son sleepwalked his way outside and into the minivan at 5 am and buckled himself into his usual seat. Going outside to wake him up, he looked up at her (still asleep) and said "Where do we need to go now, Mom?". :blink:

I have no solution, of course, beyond what I practice in my own home with my own daughter. It's a constant learning process.

[ShadowHM]

Although the author presented his story in an amusing fashion, the trends he covered are very definitely there. I have watched it over the course of the my parenting adventure and I see other negative aspects of it that were not identified in the article.

The lack of 'down' time and the subsequent stress is one thing. Children, however, are remarkably adaptable little critters and most will cope with that. What worries me more are some other ramifications.

First:

Children who are ferried from one supervised activity to another are also learning how to do what they are told, when they are told to do it. Now there are times, as a parent, when I would really value this. :P But, by and large, I want to raise rugged individualists. I want my children to question authority, think about what they are doing and THEN decide what to do. I don't want to raise a child who will just go out and do the bidding of the next authority figure who shows up. If children are freed to do self-directed activities, then they learn to make their own decisions about what they like and when they like it.

I have been practising this in a schizophrenic way for over ten years now. My children get a modicum of scheduled activities during the school year - basic swimming lessons once a week and another activity of their choosing one or two other days of the week. During the summer, I move to the cottage and enrol them in nothing. They get to choose what they want to do - indeed, they are forced to do so. After about a week the refrain of "Mom - I'm bored. What can I do?" changes to "Aww....do I have to come home now?" It takes a few firm repeats of "You are a bright kid and I know you can figure out something interesting to do", but they do get there. I call this the policy of Benign Neglect. I have a general idea of where they are and what they are up to, but I don't impose any restrictions beyond basic safety.

Second:

There is another concern I have about children who have a surfeit of organized activities. They do not learn basic socialization skills. Again, if someone is telling you what to do and when to do it, you will not learn how to discuss, negotiate or compromise. You will either strive to be the authority figure yourself or acquiesce, and there won't be a lot of learning about those other important life skills.

I have seen any number of little princes and princesses come by my home and in the school yards who have serious trouble in the 'getting along with others' category. This has fed my belief that self-directed play - just hanging with the local kids and doing things is an important arena to learn those skills. If you just play with friends on the 'by appointment' basis, then you don't learn to get along with kids who you did not choose as a playmate.

Again, I have seen this in action at the cottage. The choice of playmates is limited to 'Who is up this weekend?'. The gang of kids run as a pack and they have to learn to get along. They have to do everything from negotiate how long they will play 'house' in the tangle of cattails growing on the other side of the point versus how long they will hunt frogs to how long they will work on that tree-house. And they have to negotiate who is the leader for each activity. They have to learn to compromise and do something that is not at the top of their list to get company for their favourite activity.

These may not be earth-shattering problems, but they are trends that are indeed coupled with the 'over-programmed child' syndrome that was discussed in that newspaper article, and I believe they are going to make for future problems for both the children involved and for society as a whole.

[Baylan]

Hello ShadowHM!

Your practice seems like something I had a little bit more of when I was younger, although I definately do not regret having a few daily activities as I had as a younger kid.

Basically I was almost always involved in some sort of sport at one point in the year and along came with that daily practices. Essentially this means that eventually your children will want more structured and a few more "Go here do this" activites. Right now, I'm a two season athlete which takes up 2/3 of my school year with 2-3 hour practices every day after school along with weight training for football, and pool workouts for both football and track.

Sooner or later, they are going to yearn for more than just hanging out with friends, I think... athletics are great, spectacular things but they require a bit more time investment than most other things especially in high school. For example, during football season my band also does marching band and therefor the halftime show at our high school's varisity football games. On Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday I would not be home before 8:30 and quite often later than that. Either way, I enjoyed doing both of these activities and its one of those things that your kids may never experience if you keep them limited to a single activity or two per week :-).

Baylan

[ShadowHM]

Hi Baylan :)

High School is a whole new kettle of fish. First of all, I can no longer 'require' activities. They are well along the way to independent decision making. By then they have all the general swim badges possible, and I cannot force anything further. As it happens, the older ones have decided independently to pursue more, and one is a fully qualified lifeguard, while the other is not far behind.

And, I do apologize for being unclear. The activities that I required of them were athletic. They got to choose which one, but I decreed it would be athletic in nature. I am a firm believer in the 'healthy body/healthy mind' philosophy. So we have had soccer, hockey, and tae-kwan-do as the main 'activities' they undertook.


My sons have selected their own high school sports - the two that are in high school so far have selected swim team and track. We live close enough to the school that they are not only able but required to get themselves there on their own for the practices. (Although I have relented for the 6:00 a.m. swim practices and played chauffeur.) The point is that now it is them who is making the choice about 'going there and doing that', not me.


I am not sure whether it is personal predilection or my 'independence training' that is the root of it, but it is noteworthy that the sports selected are not 'team' sports.


BTW......congratulations on managing academics and still keeping involved in the band and the football team. :) And somehow......still playing D2 with verve and style too.

[Baylan]

Hi again ShadowHM!

Ah, now I see :). The required activities are good, and the healthy body/healthy mind is something I also agree with completely.

As for the sports, soccer is a blast, as is hockey (when you figure out how to play, especially on ice) and for a long while I took tae-kwan-do myself. (Made it up to the fourth or fifth belt, green? I think). Team sports are in my opinion very important to development. Its unlike anything else I've ever experienced myself, especially in high school because there is a lot of school spirit, a lot of teamwork, and a ton of effort. I personally am very competative, and as such enjoy the comraderie, the competition, and the work required in order to say earn a starting spot on a football team. Of course, if they are picking the sports you don't have any say in this, so the point is moot. :)

Thanks for the kudos as well, it wasn't exactly easy but I managed with little sleep and many late nights :)!

-Baylan

[Yrrek]

What do you play in band? I march the sousaphone! :blink: This winter I also did wrestling, that was incredibly fun....except for the coach. Not the most lenient guy there is. I won't elaborate. Anyways, I used to run cross-country, but I wasn't fast enough for these high-schoolers running a mile in under 5:30 minutes. That's just insane! I would have done football, but being only 130lbs makes it hard to run over the other guys :) That's ok though, band is way too much fun to take time away from it to play on my schools horrible football team! :blink:

[Baylan]

Hello Yrrek, weight doesn't have as much to do with it as you might imagine. I currently weigh in at about 130 lbs. myself, and I expect to start on JV my Sophomore year (next year). Of course, my bench press is currently in the area of 140-145 lbs. because I've been working on it all off season. By next season, it'll probably be in the 160-170 range with some luck and some hard work. Thats what seperates me from the rest of the team... I work harder than anyone else. The day football ended I was in the weight room, the day track ended I was doing a workout of some sort. Either way, you should reconsider!

-Baylan

[LavCat]

Yup, you have a smart child! ;)

Thank you. I think of him as precocious.

[Yrrek]

What position do you play? When I played for Pop-Warner I was left-tackle! So I don't really have much experience playing anything else....and I am obviously not large enough to play left-tackle for my highschool football team! :lol: Don't get me wrong, I would love to play, but really my team needs line-men, we have too many people in the backfield already (which I would go for if not for my slowness) so I am sticking with band. Glad to hear you enjoy it though! I know I did!

[Baylan]

I play corner back and split end. Way back when, I played fullback and linebacker but I've since slowed down growing while my friends kept going. Something else, every team needs every player it can get. I'm in a decently sized school at about 1200 students and we have about 70 guys who play football every year. We lose 5 of those guys, we lose 7.14% of our team. We gain 5 guys? Our we get another 7.14%. Every team needs every guy it can get, besides - what harm can be had by trying out? Besides, athletics are great for the body and mind, the teamwork, comraderie, and discipline are something that you'll never lose and never grow out of.

-Baylan

[Yrrek]

My school is pushing 2700, with well over 100 guys on the team each year. :) I would like to play, but my chances of getting any playing time, much less starting, is VERY small. Don't get me wrong, I still stay in shape, I run the mile in 6 1/2 minutes and used to bench 135lbs. But I haven't had a chance to work out in a while, been too busy or noone will take me to the gym. :( And now that I can drive, I would go to the gym, except I had my appendix taken out, which can be read in my thread about hospital visits, (sorry, it's late and I have to get up super early so I don't want to get the link) and I am not allowed any strenuous activity until 28 May. Double :( That's all for now, night all!

[Mithrandir]

I think part of the problem with the "competitive parent" syndrome that seems so prevalent in our current society is that society, in general, tends to underestimate children mentally and seeks to fill the void of time with physical activites.

I recently read that in Medieval times, it was quite common for children of nobles to learn up to 4 languages by age 6. An impressive feat, to say the least. Now though, children don't even enter school until... age 6 is it? Why is that? Obviously our genetics haven't changed in a mere 800 years so that children are less able to assimilate knowledge. Granted, it's a parent's job in those pre-Kindergarten years to teach the child, but few parents are well-equipped, much less capable, of teaching their children something as advanced as 4 languages (or whatever equally as technical).

If it has been proven that children are capable of learning these things, why is society not following through?

Or is it just modern day teaching methods? Or genetics (it has been shown that children can learn languages better at a younger age... my knowledge is imperfect as to whether it would extend to mathematics and such)? Think of the advances are society might be capable of undertaking is the thresholds of child learning ability are pushed. It almost awes me to think of children learning Riemann Sums and antidifferentiation at age 6 instead of 18. That would be a true picture of the future.


Hmm, sort of strayed from the point at hand... but, what the hell :)

[Elric of Grans]

Hail Mithrandir,

With the example of languages, there are people today who do that: they ensure there are several different languages spoken around their children all the time so that they grow up multilingual. Trouble is, if the patents themselves are not multilingual, they need to get others in to do it... do you know how expensive it is to learn a language. Now, to complicate things further, tell the instructor that it's not you they'll be teaching: it's your very young child. People do it, but they are not common for a reason ;)

To learning in general, it is known that as we age, our ability to learn does dim - hence the old dog and new tricks - but I am not too sure of specifics. I know it's not impossible to teach calc and trig to a kid in Primary School, but that is not going on any averages or anything: just the fact I know it's been done before. How the average kid would do at this I cannot say... I would like to say they would find it easier than people in their late teens, but I could be proven very wrong there ;)

Of cause, I am personally disapointed by the Australian Education system. I could tell you some horror stories about how bad things are here (though I've heard they are not much better over there either...); I would just love to lay the blame there ;) However I cannot... without more supporting evidence :P If I had any children, I would like to teach them everything I could at a young age - unless they were simply not interested in anything I could pass onto them; it's not be four languages (well, unless you count programming languages :P ), but I would like to give them what I could :)

[--Pete]

Hi,

Elric already hit a bit of this. Those children probably grew up in a household where the mother (and her servants) spoke her native language, the father (and his retainers) spoke his, many of the servants spoke the local language, and some common court language (or perhaps Latin) was also commonly used. Not an unusual situation.

However, the point is that we humans seem to be hard wired to learn language in our infancy and early childhood. And in that period we learn many "languages" even if we are only learning one language. And we seem to lose much of that ability by the time we are eight or nine. So, that is not a good indicator of how well the teaching methods of a few hundred years ago compare to those of today. Remember that those same children who learned those four languages learned to read and write in none of them. Learned no math. There was no science to learn. However, they did learn to play an instrument, to sing, courtly manner, etc. For the males, the most important and time consuming part of their education was how to fight. The females, beyond some domestic talents, were for the most part ignored as being unsuited for anything other than a bargaining chip in alliances.

And, of course, this was for the tiny fraction of the population who was born noble. As for the rest, they had no education (or much of anything) at all.

Indeed, studies of how we learn and what we can easily learn as a function of age have shown that our school systems is mostly wrong. Young children can learn language very easily. They can learn to read almost as easily. The alphabet and counting are much harder, but mathematical logic could be taught to preschoolers. And, yes, it is possible (and preferable) to learn to read without learning the alphabet first.

Presently, much of our educational focus in the first few years of school is on memorization. Memorization of the alphabet, of numbers, of addition, subtraction, multiplication, division tables. Of States and their capitals. Of names and places and dates. Children have inquisitive and very logical minds. As an example, they invent a regular form of grammar before they learn all the "exceptions" we adults live with. Thus, a child wanting to express the plural of "man" goes through the stages of "men" (when words are individual units), to "mans" when they figure out the regular plural rule, to "mens" when they haven't exactly figured out irregulars), finally to "men" when they've been fully indoctrinated to the illogical way we speak (and pass on) our language.

However, the stress on dull, boring, repetitive memorization in the early years of education is what turns a lot of children off. By the time schools deign to begin to answer all those interesting questions, the child no longer gives a damn.

So, yeah, the genetic makeup of a human should be considered in education and it hasn't been. But that does not mean that children they can learn anything at any time. Different abilities arise (and sometimes go away) at different times.

And, of course, what applies to "children" in the abstract may not apply at all to any given "child" in the concrete.

--Pete

[Kevin]

I do understand that many children do all this because the parents set it up but from my small town perspective and experience, most of the kids I grew up with (myself included) who did a million and one things didn't do it because their parents asked them/forced them to, but because the child wanted to. Yes, some of the activities of the active children were things the parents made them try, but not always.

I don't know if children in larger cities are like this. But I know that my friends and I joined activities because we wanted to, often times so we could hang out with each other more. I was in a million things, my parents didn't ferry me to most of them either. I rode my bike or walked, as did my friends. This is part of what leads me to believe it is a smaller town thing, you don't want a 10 year old riding his bike by himself in New York or St. Louis. But in Platteville or Rolla, it isn't a big deal. Especially if Tim and John and Scott and Lisa are all riding with him too. Or older Brother Chad or Steve is with them as well.

Now admittedly I was doing so many things at times just to try and get the attention of my parents (though it didn't usually work) but many of my friends who had better households to grow up in, weren't in that boat. Their parents would make most of the major events when they could, and supported them, but the kid choose to do it, and could quit (and sometimes did) whenever they felt like it.

I see this in the children (I have none myself at age 28) of my friends now, many of whom have 3-10 year olds. The kids are asking the parents to be able to join this team or club or activity. Sure it may be from pressures because Johny or Susy is doing it and their parents forced them, but that isn't what I usually see.

I'm not convinced it really is a problem if the child really does want to do all these things. From middle school to high school I swam, played baseball, football, track, played 3 instruments, was on the yearbook, the newspaper, several academic teams, involved in school plays, Cub Scouts (bot not Boy Scouts), chess club. Not always in the same year, but in HS it was 3 sports, band, orchestra, yearbook, newspaper, academic teams. I still had free time, still just went and hung out, and everthing was voluntary at that stage. Swimming was the only thing that my parents made me do, I started swimming competitively at age 5, by age 7, I couldn't wait for the summer seaon to start, and since I made state my senior year, I was glad I did it. But everything else I joined of my own volition. Yeah, this whole paragraph was anecdotal, but I see the same type of patterns in other little kids I know. But again, I am little to kids in towns of 15,000 people or less with small universities in them.