Monday, November 28, 2005

Rainy Monday, bratty kids, and the crumbling halls of justice

Monday after Thanksgiving and the Boomtown Rats say it all. Plus, it's rainy and cold here in Atlanta. Bleeeech! I was, however, a very good girl this morning - resuming my 5-6:30am writing time. Why, if I were double-jointed I'd pat myself on the back . . .

Yesterday, the New York Times had a good article about bratty kids. Seems the little darlings are just getting worse and worse (go to any restaurant for proof). I can't stand conservative child behavior columnist John Rosemond (always so smug, and it's always the mother's fault), but author Judith Warner and some of the other experts quoted are believable. The article does bring up what I noticed a few years ago when Kate was going through middle and high school (and when I taught high school myself) - the academic pressure we put on kids today is enormous. I'm convinced that's why Kate left University of Colorado after one year, even though she had good grades. She was just sick and tired of school by the time she graduated from high school - gifted classes, AP classes, a semester in France when she was a sophomore. Shoot, she felt she'd already been to college. From the article:

"These kids are so extremely stressed from the academic load they're carrying and how cloistered they are and how they have to live under the watchful eye of their parents," Dr. Mogel said. "They have no kid space."

Paradoxically, she said, parental over-involvement in their children's lives today often hides a very basic kind of indifference to their children's real need, simply to be kids. "There are all these blurry boundaries," she said. "They need to do fifth-grade-level math in third grade and have every pleasure and indulgence of adulthood in childhood and they act like kids and we get mad."

If stress and strain, self-centeredness and competition are the pathogens underlying the rash of rudeness perceived to be endemic among children in America today, then the cure, some experts said, has to be systemic and not topical. Stop blaming the children, they said. Stop focusing on the surface level of behavior and start curing instead the social, educational and parental ills that feed it.

This may mean less "quality" time with children and more time getting them to do things they don't want to do, like sitting for meals, making polite conversation and - Madonna was right - picking their clothes up off the floor.

Kids do need more "kid space." I think everybody's going to hit a high-achievement-burn-out wall pretty soon. Do they have to do "college work" in middle school? Do we have to schedule every waking minute of their lives? And it's not just parents pressuring children; the kids put pressure on themselves to over-participate. Glad Kate is 22 and has found balance in her life - a good job, great place to live (not at my house!), and terrific friends. I can only hope things will have changed by the time my grand-chirrens come along. Whew!

On another note, seems "the crumbling halls of justice" is not just a political metaphor. The Supreme Court building is crumbling, so sez CNN, and you betta' watch out because a big lack-o-justice boulder may land on you any minute. Is God pissed, or what?

Finally, I'll toss you a little book-fanatic bone. The Guardian published its Books of the Year, gleaned from interviews with a lot of British people I never heard of (but I'll take the G's word that they're important artsy-fartsy folks who know their book stuff).

OK, a cuppa tea, then back to work. No really. I mean it.

1 comment:

melinama said...

When Melina and Zed were growing up, we had a John Rosemond Hate Club and would read his harsh, awful advice to each other with indignation and howls of laughter. I got the idea that he himself had big problems with his kids. Glad you hate him too.