LDS Freedom Forum

Parents are going to ludicrous lengths to take the bumps out of life for their children. However, parental hyperconcern has the net effect of making kids more fragile; that may be why they're breaking down in record numbers.

Messing up, however, even in the playground, is wildly out of style. Although error and experimentation are the true mothers of success, parents are taking pains to remove failure from the equation.

Anderegg finds that anxious parents are hyperattentive to their kids, reactive to every blip of their child's day, eager to solve every problem for their child—and believe that's good parenting. "If you have an infant and the baby has gas, burping the baby is being a good parent. But when you have a 10-year-old who has metaphoric gas, you don't have to burp him. You have to let him sit with it, try to figure out what to do about it. He then learns to tolerate moderate amounts of difficulty, and it's not the end of the world."

In the hothouse that child raising has become, play is all but dead. Over 40,000 U.S. schools no longer have recess. And what play there is has been corrupted. The organized sports many kids participate in are managed by adults; difficulties that arise are not worked out by kids but adjudicated by adult referees.

While their innate reactivity seems to destine all these children [with inborn highstrung temperaments] for later anxiety disorders, things didn't turn out that way. Between a touchy temperament in infancy and persistence of anxiety stand two highly significant things: parents. Kagan found to his surprise that the development of anxiety was scarcely inevitable despite apparent genetic programming. At age 2, none of the overexcitable infants wound up fearful if their parents backed off from hovering and allowed the children to find some comfortable level of accommodation to the world on their own. Those parents who overprotected their children—directly observed by conducting interviews in the home—brought out the worst in them.

M249Gunner wrote:This goes along with one of my all time favorite essays-"A Nation of Cowards." Give it a read. You will like it.
(No, I didn't write it.)

http://rkba.org/comment/cowards.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

In the mid-sixties there was a public service advertising campaign targeted at car owners about the prevention of car theft. The purpose of the ad was to urge car owners not to leave their keys in their cars. The message was, "Don't help a good boy go bad." The implication was that, by leaving his keys in his car, the normal, law-abiding car owner was contributing to the delinquency of minors who, if they just weren't tempted beyond their limits, would be "good."

Imagine my surprise when I came across a kindergartener in the German forest whittling away on a stick with a penknife. His teacher, Wolfgang, lightheartedly dismissed my concern: "No one's ever lost a finger!"

Similarly, Brittany, an American mom, was stunned when she moved her young family to Sweden and saw 3- and 4-year-olds with no adult supervision bicycling down the street, climbing the roofs of playhouses and scaling tall trees with no adult supervision. The first time she saw a 3-year-old high up in a tree at preschool, she started searching for the teacher to let her know. Then she saw another parent stop and chat with one of the little tree occupants, completely unfazed. It was clear that no one but Brittany was concerned.

The French, as well as many others, believe that routinely giving your child a chance to feel frustration gives him a chance to practice the art of waiting and developing self-control. Gilles, a French father of two young boys, told me that frustrating kids is good for them because it teaches them the value of delaying gratification and not always expecting (or worse, demanding) that their needs be met right now.

Children in Finland go outside to play frequently all day long. "How can you teach when the children are going outside every 45 minutes?" a recent American Fulbright grant recipient in Finland, who was astonished by how little time the Finns were spending in school, inquired curiously of a teacher at one of the schools she visited. The teacher in turn was astonished by the question. "I could not teach unless the children went outside every 45 minutes!"

The Finnish model of education includes a late start to academics (children do not begin any formal academics until they are 7 years old), frequent breaks for outdoor time, shorter school hours and more variety of classes than in the US. Equity, not high achievement, is the guiding principle of the Finnish education system.

While we in America preach the mantra of early intervention, shave time off recess to teach more formal academics and cut funding to non-academic subjects like art and music, Finnish educators emphasize that learning art, music, home economics and life skills is essential.

blaclogic
My boy drew a gun on a piece of paper and got sent home.

karlpopperfan
another difference: if a kid in germany cuts his finger or a kid in sweden falls out of the tree, is there a rush by the parents to file a multi-million dollar lawsuit?

An Engineer
You are right about the risk taking with the young being drawn to "dangerous" things. I watched a 15 month old grand daughter climb the back of a sofa, step onto a high chair that was backed up against it, sit down, then turn around and lower herself to the ground, The final act required a "free fall" of some 6 inches or more. The first time, the dropping to the ground was very slow and deliberate releasing her grip on the chair only when there was no way to hang on and strength was giving way to fatigue. Once her feet hit the ground, she immediately ran around the sofa and did it again. I watched her for many minutes as she repeated this activity over and over. She was "training" herself! Each time was faster and more confident. After ten minutes or so, the last 6 inch drop was made quickly and with good balance on the landing! This child was a climber and loved to climb one of the posts on our four post bed climbing to the top and removing the finial (and eventually "teething" on the post and making marks that make it impossible to ever sell the bed! We could never get rid of it with such memories engraved in it.)
This girl is now 7 and climbs trees to 15 feet and higher. The only rule is to go no higher than she can remember how to get back down.

Fairminded wrote: I limped half a block, shouting for help, and several neighbors even admitted later that they heard me but didn't respond. If a friend's mom hadn't been driving by and picked me up to take me home I might've been forced to walk the entire way to my friend's house without anyone stepping in to help.

That was a real eye-opener, I'll tell you what.

skmo wrote:I understand grief. It's a powerful force that has to be dealt with. However, we've come so far in our "Please wipe my nose for me, it's icky" society that people expect society to spen millions and millions of dollars just because they lack the backbone to grow past their pain? Okay, you had a tragedy. I've had them, too. If I'd have had a location to direct my frustration at, had I threatened to "chain myself to the doors if they try to reopen it" I'd rightly expect someone to lock me up in an institution because I was mentally unable to deal with life.

Come on, people, Deal with life or get on medication until you can grow past your childishness.

Fairminded wrote: ↑May 9th, 2013, 4:43 pm An interesting comment from that article you posted warning that American communities don't have the sense of community cohesion and responsibility that would allow children to roam free in the security that any grownup around would be keeping half an eye out for their safety.

I grew up in an LDS community, with every single neighbor being a familiar face on Sunday. And maybe due to being a middle kid in a family of 7 I pretty much ran wild the entire time. I never got into trouble, I didn't get hurt, and I obviously didn't get kidnapped.

There was a time, however, when I was 15, that I was walking to a friend's house and got attacked by a doberman breed. Right in the middle of my own Ward's neighborhood, serious injuries to my leg and arm. I limped half a block, shouting for help, and several neighbors even admitted later that they heard me but didn't respond. If a friend's mom hadn't been driving by and picked me up to take me home I might've been forced to walk the entire way to my friend's house without anyone stepping in to help.

That was a real eye-opener, I'll tell you what.