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The Hurried Child Revisited I haven't yet seen a 1994 calendar aimed at the preschool set, but I expect to come across one soon. The urge to program and over-program children does not seem to be abating. I wonder why. My wondering results in a few answers which may or may not apply to readers. We live in a competitive world and parents honestly feel there is so much to be learned that they must start early to insure that their children are prepared for what comes next. Alternately (and often unconsciously), parents want to be sure that their children enjoy what they enjoyed as children, to avoid what they hated in their own childhoods, and to participate in activities they wished they had had themselves but did not. This is a heavy burden for any child to carry. It implies expectations of success. Every culture, every subculture, every family, every individual has its own set of expectations. These expectations get translated to action in the form of the week's schedule. There are inner pressures without which no child could grow up. These include the innate desire to become adult, to leave the "being small in a large world" phase behind. This urges children to use their parents (and later on other adults, as well) as role models. They learn for the satisfaction of pleasing those they love--a strong motivation. The desire for mastery and competence is powerful and fuels tremendous efforts. Sometimes parents see this mastery as an invitation to further involvement. ("He did so well on the piano, let's add violin lessons and see how that works out.") Carried to extremes, such an approach can result in the child's thinking that he can never be good enough to satisfy parental expectations. Even parents who feel they never push their children may not recognize that their own needs to raise "successful" children are translated to these children in subtle ways. The recipe for young children to become competent is to be reassured of their progress at the moment. Doing fine right now is what counts. Achievements of young children should be seen as pleasures, not as stepping stones to the next accomplishment. With this philosophy comes the need for pragmatic methods with which to implement it. These methods will vary from family to family and from one time to another, but for starters: 1) Look at your child's calendar and revel in its open spaces. 2) Before you decide to put any-thing into those empty spaces, ask yourself if it is to satisfy your own needs or the child's. Some honest introspection is called for here. 3) Observe your child carefully. Just because one child has the metabolism and temperament to thrive on being very busy and very hurried does not mean that his sibling will thrive under the same regime. 4) Ask yourself if your child is irritable, having sleeping or eating problems, is becoming withdrawn, or is showing hostile aggression or psychogenic symptoms. Do these symptoms show up when she is overscheduled? Are they a change from her behavior when she was on a slower track? Human childhood is long for excellent reasons. Not only is there much to be learned, but what is learned must be integrated into the child's already-present conscience development and burgeoning sense of values. Some of this learning requires stretches of uninterrupted time. It requires flights of fantasy and, eventually, the ability to separate fact from fantasy and the imagined from the real. For small people whose social skills are fundamental rather than sophisticated, it is necessary to have some time alone to recover from the onslaughts of others on the same level. We live in a world in which we feel ourselves to have little influence on many important economic and political issues. In this human issue, we do have influence. As adults who love children, let's use it wisely. |
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