Parents have gone insane. Like the tag line from the old TV show, The 6 Million Dollar Man,” We can make our children better, faster, stronger, smarter…” And if we don’t do everything we can to that end, then we are failures as parents and we are condemning our children to be failures for the rest of their lives. This trend, called hyper-parenting by some has become disturbingly pervasive around the world. From playing classical music in the womb which will “make your baby smarter” to toys that aren’t toys anymore but interactive learning units designed to increase IQ and development, to cram schools for 5 year olds (so they can get a head start on their colleagues) and kids who are so overloaded with extra-curricular activities (violin, piano, foreign language, multiple sports) they have to use Palm Pilots to keep track of their schedules, we have been determined to do the best by our kids even if that means virtually killing them to do it. Rates of depression and anxiety, eating disorders and body dysmorphia are serious growing problems among our kids.
As a new parent, I found the book Under Pressure by Carl Honore to be a welcome slap in the face. Luckily I haven’t had time to descend into the madness of hyper-parenting but I’ve already begun to hear the seductive siren song. After all who doesn’t want their kids to be better, smarter, stronger, faster? We all do, we all want the best for our children. But we often lose sight of what our children actually want in favor of what we want for them.
Traveling around the world Honore shows time and again that kids don’t want hyper-parenting, and that despite our best efforts it does not help them succeed more or become better people. It often backfires and has the opposite effect. What kids want and need is: to feel safe and loved, they want our attention and time with no conditions attached, they need boundaries and limits, they need space to take risks and make mistakes, they need to spend time outdoors, they need to be ranked and measured less, they need healthy food, they need to aspire to something bigger than owning stuff and they need room to be themselves.
Honore argues for us to slow down, and adopt a saner view of childhood. I could not agree more. I highly, highly recommend this book for all parents. We can do better by our children, but not through hyper-parenting. I think the following quote from the last chapter of the book, sums things up nicely.
“Half a century ago, an influential English pediatrician called D.W. Winnicott argued that engineering the perfect childhood was impossible and that striving to do so was damaging both to the parent and to the child. Instead, parents should aspire to meet their children’s needs most of the time and accept that they will mess up occasionally. Do a ‘good enough’ job, said Winnicott, and most children will grow up fine.”
Do your children a favor, get this book, read this book.
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