August 23, 2006

Give The Kid A Cell Phone And We're All DOOMED

A long, rambling article about hovering, hyperattentive parents and the threat they pose to their children--and to civilization as we know it. Overprogramming; lack of unsupervised, self-directed play; parents on cell phone speed-dial from birth to age 30; finagling dubious medical and psychological excuses for no-time-limit testing; and generally imposing parental expectations of achievement on perpetualyl immature, anxious wimps in training:

Parents need to abandon the idea of perfection and give up some of the invasive control they've maintained over their children. The goal of parenting, Portmann reminds, is to raise an independent human being. Sooner or later, he says, most kids will be forced to confront their own mediocrity.
I don't know, sounds like someone's just trying to headfake me, get me to drop my guard for a minute, and then--FFWWWWTT!--her kid jumps ahead of mine on the preschool waitlist. Nice try, suckah.

A Nation of Wimps [psych today via msn, thanks to dt reader greg]

1 Comment

This is an excellent, thought-provoking article. Sad to say, it rings very true - I've recently had the unfortunate opportunity to see the net result of the helicopter parenting style for myself.

And the lesson that the article tries to pass on echoes very closely the principles that the Love & Logic program advocates. Highly recommended reading.

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