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Early Years (2-6)

Extreme Parenting Striking the right balance with your child . By Lisa Alvarez Published: December, 2006

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Striking the right balance with your child We’re supposed to know so much now, especially since we’ve become parents. There is so much to know, or so we’re meant to understand. But is there, really, and what to do with it? More than our parents and our grandparents before us, there is now a vast body of knowledge or, at least, information, about parenting and childhood development. It’s found not only in the usual places – pediatricians’ offices and books – but on websites, blogs, advice columns, radio and television shows, sellers of nifty self-improvement programs for 6 months to 16. More than our parents and our grandparents before us, we live in a world that seems to insist from the moment of birth that we actively prepare our children to enter it, to achieve and compete and win. We hear it everywhere. Start early. The first years last forever. It’s a frankly nervous-making kind of reverse countdown, and some of us feel badly if we are failing to prepare our kid for launch. People have always struggled to be good parents, providing the best for their children. But today’s super-parents may be particularly vulnerable to forces that suggest that they know best, or at least assert the loudest that they do, or market the best, or shame us into super-duper parenthood. We buy. We do. We fill. Our calendars include more appointments for our children than do our own full professional lives. We want to develop our children’s intellect, their physical strength and grace. Enter the opportunities for private lessons, sports, tutors, all of which we feel we need, and in a hurry, and early and under the guidance of expert teachers and professionals before it’s too late and our children are doomed. Yes, doomed. As if they will fall off of a cliff instead of slip, skin a knee, gradually learn to hike, set their eyes on a different summit or valley or career, like everybody does, whether we admit it or not. It turns out that daddy, a happy enough guy, is a modestly successful human being and not an astronaut or a firefighter or a neurosurgeon. Mommy is still afraid of flying, does not play the piano, has failed to learn Spanish, and will never, ever make the U.S. Olympic gymnastics team. She spent her childhood at the library, reading, not on the balancing beam. Her time with books made her the bookish, reasonably thoughtful, curious and engaged citizen mom she is today. So why does it seem that now, more than ever, parents who should know better are pressured to believe that the early years are some kind of narrow window of opportunity in which their children’s fate is made or lost? That’s just too much pressure – on parents and on children. Some would argue that the pressure campaign begins even before birth, continuing with increased intensity during infancy, a period now targeted by what writer Alissa Quart calls the “Baby Genius Edutainment Complex,” an industry that has blossomed in recent years. It’s no longer enough to teach the little babe to roll over and sit up. Some of our high-achieving infants learn sign language, recognize Van Gogh and Mozart, memorize words on flashcards. By the time they toddle into preschool, we expect much more from them than was ever expected from us at that age. Quart suggests that this “reflects a faith that if babies are exposed to enough stimulating multimedia content, typically in tandem with equally stirring classes, bright children can be invented.” In her new book, “Hothouse Kids: The Dilemma of the Gifted Child,” Quart asks the question: “Whose purpose does all this aggressive early learning serve?” Naturally, it’s supposed to serve our children; Quart suggests that it may not. She notes that “the impulse that drives parents…is understandable. The wish to raise flourishing children is as old as humankind.” She points out that children have always flourished, even when they weren’t listening to Mozart at 4 years of age and becoming bilingual at 5. Albert Einstein (the scientist, not the cheerful marketer of those videos sitting in my bookcase) is a case in point. He was, Quart reminds us, “a late bloomer… who didn’t speak until he was 3 and no one thought him ‘gifted.’” Her book is a cautionary tale. A recent editorial in the Boston Globe, “A Catered Generation,” warns of the results of such extreme childrearing, with its special focus on success, or a variety of it. Neil Howe and William Strauss’ book, “Millenials Rising: The Next Great Generation” takes a measured look at the coming-of-age crowd. What happens when our high-achievers, our chaperoned children, go away to college? “It’s easy to be optimistic when you’ve never been allowed to fail, when every kid at a swim meet has to win something, and making children feel good becomes as important as ensuring that they do well. It’s easy to have a can-do spirit when you’ve been insulated from the ordinary risks of childhood. As (author Neil) Howe put it, ‘This isn’t a generation of kids who went wandering in back yards and empty lots and thought of things to play. All their activity was prepared for them.’” And that’s the problem: Life is not a supervised activity. If those in this group are to fill their grandparents’ shoes, they can’t continue to be coddled, not when they arrive at an age when, for instance, their grandparents were fighting wars. D-Day didn’t come with a handbook. Parents, and colleges for that matter, would do well to do less catering and let their very old kids finally become adults. I share at least part of Howe’s sobering critique of the parent as coddler (coach, personal assistant, publicist) of a child. It’s dishonest to pretend that our children’s lives are going to be any less messy and rich and wonderful. I also share Quart’s vision of the hothouse child, one who has been nurtured in an ideal environment, but who may have a difficult transition to that messy, rich and wonderful world. Our family life is messy, rich and wonderful, an accurate representation of the world, we believe, we hope. There are opportunities for our son to enrich himself and us too. My son’s life is full, but not too full. I don’t want him to lose his childhood because he is so busy making appointments for his adulthood. Lisa Alvarez is a regular contributor.

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