Reply to Lack of independent play is creating mental health crisis among kids today -- and overprotective parenting is to blame

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I agree with this - but I think the problem is both overbearing parents AND parents constantly turning to screen time [/quote]

Parents are turning to screen time because it’s impossible to do the adult life stuff and be your kids playmate. But you can’t just send them out, even though that’s what’s best for them.

It’s all interrelated [/quote]
We had no cable tv, and my parents did "adult stuff" while we played by ourselves. My parents never played with us. That's a more recent thing, and I think part of the problem.  Parents feel like they *have* to play with their kids.   Kids won't find other kids to play with if mommy and daddy play with them all the time, or they have structured activities everyday.  It becomes a vicious circle.

Just back off and let your kids figure it out.  I'm not saying never play with your kids, but other kids should be their main source of playmates, not the parents or activities.[/quote]

This is a situation where talking about "parents" as a monolith just doesn't work. And also why a tendency to view the past nostalgically, and the present critically, can lead you astray.

It's true that parents today are more likely to feel like they "have" to play with their kids. But why is that? In my case, it's because I was raised by people who actively disliked their children, and that had a negative impact on me both as a kid and as an adult. So I do feel I have an obligation to spend time with my kids, get to know them, take an interest in what they are interested in. But it's not driven by some vague cultural notion or just being a martyr. Is based on my own experience and a recognition that ignoring your kids and telling them, always, to please leave mommy and daddy alone, might have a negative impact on their psyche. I don't want my kids to have to spend two decades in therapy, as I have, building the scaffolding of a sense of self worth, because I am too busy or disinterested to play with them. So yes, I sometimes force myself to play with my kids even when I'm not really in the mood.

Now, I know that not all parents had my experience as a child. But I also no that I am nowhere near alone in it. My parents were the way they were for a few reasons, and they are common: (1) they were raised by Greatest Generation parents who were also alcoholics with untreated mental illness, including PTSD from the war/depression, and (2) they had kids young and out of obligation, and did not really view not having kids as an option. This is an extremely common combination of factors for people who had kids in the 1970s and 80s, and it often resulted in the kind of parental neglect I experienced, which means that a lot of people parenting today are working to correct that pattern with their own kids.

Yes people are sometimes overzealous, and I think parents could stand to be told, more often, "It's okay to take breaks from your kids, and it's okay to let your kids figure stuff out." But parents aren't playing with their kids or focusing on their kids because they are control freaks or because they are subscribing to some crackpot parenting technique they learned on Tik Tok. Most of the time parents are spending time with their kids in an effort to undo generational trauma. That's actually good! Why don't we talk more about how that's actually good?[/quote]
whoaw.. you have issues that have nothing to do with your kids.  You should've taken care of that before you had kids.

If I tell my kids to go play rather than expect me to play with them all the time that doesn't mean I don't love my kids.  I'm sorry about your childhood, but you are projecting.[/quote]

If you actually read my comment, you'd see I'm explicitly not projecting -- my point is that while not everyone has this background, it's a lot more common than people realize and helps to account for the shift in parenting approaches from one generation to the next.

And thanks, I absolutely did deal with my issues before I had kids and I tell my kids to go play without me all the time. However, I understand that when parents fail to do this, it's generally not because they are crap parents or idiots or something, or even that they are over protective. They are doing it for a reason, and if you understand the reason, you can better understand the problem. But people don't want to understand the problem.

You read my post and thought "whoa, ick, family trauma -- please keep that to yourself." Well guess what, that family trauma of alcoholic grandparents and neglectful parents (all kind of hidden under the table since everyone involved had a home and food and an education) is extremely common in the US. It's a generational pattern that results from large scale events like wars and major immigration waves, as well as smaller scale trends like drinking habits and access to mental healthcare.

You look at me and think "oh, you're a one off, we're talking about something else." But this is exactly what you are talking about. It's just uncomfortable so you'd rather yell at parents about screen time  or complain that kids do too many after-school activities. Just blind.[/quote]

DP but I think this type of excessive navel gazing and dwelling on your childhood “trauma” is a problem in itself.  Today’s parents are essentially a generation of narcissists, and that is certainly affecting how we’re raising our kids.  [/quote]

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