Reply to NYT The Daily: The Parents Aren't All Right

Forum Index » General Parenting Discussion

Reply to "NYT The Daily: The Parents Aren't All Right"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I’m an elementary school principal (public) here in the DMV in an upper middle class community. I love my work.

There are homes with SAHMs and moms who work  outside the home. No, the parents are not okay. The level of anxiety is through the roof, and it’s passed along to their children. The emails I receive around class placement with a particular teacher or around making sure specific friends are placed with their child is ridiculous. Everything is managed to the nth degree.

I went to school in the 70s & 80s and graduated from a top 20 school. I cannot imagine my own parents engaging in this behavior for a second. [/quote]

It is easy to say that you would not, but since virtually all parents operate this way, it’s almost impossible to go against the grain. Last summer I had a sabbatical and took a month off and kept my kids out of camp so they could enjoy more of a relaxed summer like I did in the 80s. Problem was, there were no kids their age around in the neighborhood to play with during the week. Everyone was in camp except for the nannies with little kids and they were so bummed. We’d go to the library and park and it was nannies with infants and toddlers. We would go to the pool and virtually all the kids were in camp. We would go on walks and there was no one out. They would see friends in camp at the pool and couldn’t play and were mad about it - it was the complete opposite experience of what I expected. They felt bored and isolated.The days of kids riding bikes and hanging out at home together and roving in packs in the summer that we experienced are just dead and gone.

We also did not do all the crazy sports teams and activities when the kids were little, but that means my kids are the only ones who are free on weekends. They miss out on opportunities to see and bond with their friends who aren’t available for play dates because they have swim meets and soccer games and practices, their friends see each other more regularly and that reinforces those friendships so they feel less close to those friends, and those kids get better at sports so my kids now feel like they can’t pick up a sport at 8 or 9 since the kids have all been playing since 5 and are very good, and are in more competitive leagues so my kids can’t even be with their friends. It’s insanity. I hate the hyper competitive rat race but am not sure us just hanging out and hiking and riding bikes as a family and not engaging in the insanity is actually better for them. I often worry they are missing out, but I don’t have the bandwidth or
Budget to be a soccer mom.

[/quote]

This was exactly our experience. If my daughter doesn’t do activities with her friends during the week and weekends she doesn’t see them. The few people I know who do nothing during the academic/work week have their kids doing multiple activities a day on both Saturday and Sunday to “make up” for not doing anything during the week, which seems more stressful - especially with multiple kids and birthday parties/one off activities happening on weekends.[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics