Feb
Hyper Parenting
Don’t know if you saw the CBC special the other night about ‘Hyper Parenting and Coddled Kids’ but it was an interesting look at how a generation has come with this new experiment where parents are constantly hovering and kids are being so coddled and how it is affecting them in social circles.
It basically covered all the areas: parents who don’t let their children get hurt, won’t let them have to work out social difficulties when they are young, spending ridiculous amounts of money on their ‘development’, all the way to being over-involved in their university process and even their workplace.
The best line of the night was this: if you can’t let them go into the world when they are old enough, you have not done your job properly.
Some of the things they were saying made just good common sense: for instance, by never letting your child get hurt you are stopping them from being able to think on the spot and make good decisions when it comes to social settings. By giving your child the best of everything–you are creating a ‘gotta have it my way’ mentality.
The interesting conclusion was that it will take many years before we figure out everything!
There was another observation about those who hyper parent and coddle their kids: we don’t believe in competition in a sports way anymore (everyone gets a trophy) but we are over competitive when it somes to our kids in ‘behaviour, education and social development’ (my kid(s) is better then yours).
Who doesn’t understand the pressure–you hate seeing your child get teased and so you immediately tag the other one with ‘being a bully’ and so you do whatever you can to remove your child from that situation. Your child gets pushed and so mom and dad are going to push back. You decide a certain path for ‘raising’ your child and if others don’t, you have to have evidence that your kid is doing so much better. and the list goes on and on and on.
The real kicker comes with this: child raising in this sense they discovered isn’t about the child but the parents search for greater self-esteem.
I wish there was a guaranteed way for my child to become the adult who never has problems, never does anything wrong, always has success in everything they do, and is the model citizen of faith for all others to follow.
The truth is, part of the first crew that became adults under such raising made this comment: they have become so dependant on mom and dad because the pressure to make a mistake is too great. They have come to believe that if making mistakes had been allowed–they would have learned better how to be on their own.
In the end–that really should be our goal with our kids–maybe the biggest thing I got from that for today’s parent (including myself) is that the child doesn’t have to be the best or better, but simply be able to live among their peers–when they make their mistakes, it doesn’t mean everything about me as a parent has to be called into question–less stress on my kids as children means less distress on me as a parent.
Let the kids play again–don’t worry about bruised knees or wounded egos for a bit
God Bless and Have a Good Day