This really isn't so much of a rant as it is a long expression of befuddlement. I'm still kind of processing the whole "bad parent! bad parent!" thing I observed on the internet, and I realize that one of the things that befuddles me the most is how much parenting of small children has changed, not only since I was a small child, but even since D was. Listening to what some people today apparently think is essential for normal child development makes me wonder how any of us ever learned to read and write, get along with others, or prepare to live in society.
I heard a whole bunch o' stuff about how "kindergarten is the new first grade" and how children must be in preschool by the time they're three or they'll be at a horrible disadvantage in life. Okay. Lemme say this. I am so old that not only wasn't kindergarten the equivilent of first grade in my day, it wasn't even mandatory. And I, like many of my contemporaries, did not go. I remember my first day of first grade (at age 5 years, 9 months), wherein Sister Linda had on the bulletin board fall leaves made of construction paper with our names printed on them and the first order of business on entering was to see if you could find your own name. It wasn't expected that you could. Any reading ability at all put you ahead of the game. And despite that shocking fact, we all became literate. Many of us even went to college. Amazing, no? Must have been the Schoolhouse Rock. (G'head, sing "Conjunction Junction," you know you want to.)
I also heard a bunch of stuff about it being "high time" that a first grader was involved in afterschool activities, that it was borderline neglect if they weren't in Brownies and soccer and dance class. Well, lemme see. I will admit I was a Brownie and then a Girl Scout until it became hopelessly uncool. I don't think it did anything for my social, intellectual, or spiritual development per se, though we did have the Menstruation Film there, thank god, or when I got my first period in 5th fucking grade, I'd have thought I was dying. Otherwise, it was a pretty useless waste of a couple afternoons a month. There was also at some point candlepin bowling league (couldn't bowl then, can't bowl now, though, goddamn, if any of you all ever want to go bowling, say the word, because it sounds like a hoot!), some basic swimming and dancing at the Y, and a brief, brief stab at guitar lessons, which my parents were not very supportive of, it being a known fact that no one in our family has any musical talent at all. And they conflicted with Saturday morning cartoons, so you know there was no long-term in it for me.
But, y'know, I was deeply introverted, then as now, and seriously, after school and having to deal with people all day, I was exhausted. Mostly I wanted to just go home and watch "Match Game," or play Barbies with my cousin who lived downstairs, or read my library books, or walk to the Dairy Queen with Debbie L. What happens with kids like me these days? Is the theory that if you force them to constantly be involved with other people in groups and goal-oriented activities that you will remake their natural personalities and they won't be people who like to be alone or with just another person or two, thinking and reading and using their imaginations? And even if that works, is that really what's best for society? Don't you all need people like me? Where's the next generation of overly-analytical bloggers coming from, I ask you. Sigh.
So, yeah. It's a whole new world out there. And I remain perplexed.
xoxo
7 comments:
Crazy lady--Next you'll be suggesting kids actually play with each other around the neighborhood instead of only in uniforms and with referees.
I know! That's crazy talk for sure!
I agree with you, all the enormously structured activities, both athletic and otherwise, seem very strange and way too overly confining to me.
However, two things: 1) for most of those who are better off (and don't live in the middle of a city) there often aren't neighbors, and more importantly, neighbor kids of the same age, anywhere nearby. I wonder how much of those structured activities developed because all those 1 acre suburban lots and need-to-drive-everywhere suburbs kept kids so far away from other kids that the only way they could get together was to arrange it in advance with some sort of structured activity?
2) I also wonder how much all that aggressive early schooling is a result of the general stagnation of the economy since the late 70s and parents wanting to give their kids a leg up since it's so hard to claw up otherwise, as well as parents, particularly mothers, feeling guilty for going out working full-time so wanting to push the kids to success so they won't feel they somehow neglected them and thus caused them to fail academically/economically.
I did see an interesting study recently that said something like those who start to read at age 5, say, are often trumped academically by those who don't really start reading till 7 or 8, with speculation that the later readers may actually allow for more brain development in non-reading areas. Of course, it's easy to test and see that those who get a couple years ahead academically at age 4 or 5 are still somewhat ahead at age 8, but what about age 16?
I'd imagine the early rigid schooling does make for those to do better at homework (something I never internalized properly) but it may also turn them into even more disaffected youths, wanting to get away from all the competition, structure and academic pressure by the time they're teenagers.
From the other side, sort of. My daughter was a swimmer from age 7 until the end of her senior year in college. One big difference, I suppose, is that she chose the activity. She called the shots about staying with it, about the time to put in, about her expectations. That idea shocked and offended many of the more bourgeois parents we had to deal with. The idea that a child had a mind of her own was alien to them.
I can't begin to tell you what she learned, and what we learned, from those 14 years. The dedicated swimmers lost nothing. This was their playtime as kids. In college, when she was in an incredibly demanding clinical studies program, she and her friends chose to keep swimming because they knew they "had something special going:" an unsurpassed record for their four years, with some pretty impressive numbers that I'll spare you: things that these young people made chiefly for themselves.
She still found ordinary playtime, and has warm friends outside the sport.
We all did other things, of course. I can't imagine choosing the road she did, but I'm most pleased that she chose it. If a child is shoehorned into an activity at the parents' convenience, I think that's different.
Off my soapbox.
That's totally different, IMO. When a kid finds something to be passionate about, either for the longterm, or even for a year or two, and the parents can support and encourage it, that's a good thing. D certainly did karate for a few years when he was little until he didn't want to anymore, and then three years of drum lessons as a teenager, again until he decided he was through (leaving me with $800 worth of drums in my basement and certain arcane facts in my brain like, "oh, yeah, you only want Zildjian cymbals.")
What I object to is the pushing the kids into multiple different activities whether they are the ones requesting to participate in them or not; the idea that if you don't, you are neglecting their development in some way; and the idea that playing basketball in a league with uniforms and referees and schedules is automatically superior to playing pickup basketball in your driveway or the park. Adult-controlled and structured activities teach you different skills than just playing does, and I think the pendulum has swung way too far in one direction on that one.
Did you put the drums on ebay? ;)
I'll stop there because I ought to blog about *something* on my own space.
No! They're still in the basement. Do you need any drums? :-)
Post a Comment