News Herald – Juliann Talkington
With the 24 hours news channels and the Internet came “heart string” news –abductions, poisonings, and severe medical maladies from common activities as well as “expert” opinion on health, education and safety issues. Combine this barrage of information with a generation of busy parents who waited longer to marry and have fewer children and there is fertile ground for paranoia.
This paranoia has led to “super parents” who want a perfect world for their children. These are the parents who want webcams in classrooms, complain about bullying if there is a disagreement on the playground and refuse to let their kids ride a bike, because they might skin a knee. These are also parents who will do homework for their kids, complain when their child gets a deserved “C” and believe their child’s poor behavior is the teacher’s fault.
Technology has removed the geographic and time barriers to education. Students can listen to lectures real-time or save them for later viewing. Textbooks are available in electronic format. Groups can meet electronically for academic exchanges. Exams can be given electronically and will become accurate assessments of student proficiency as security issues are resolved.
Thankfully there is a metamorphosis under way that appears to be rolling back the “insane” over protectiveness and over investment of parents. The new movement goes by many names — slow parenting, free-range parenting, simplicity parenting. The message is the same. Less meddling is better and failure can be helpful. If parents really want their children to succeed they need to learn when to let go.
In early 2008, Lenore Skenazy, a journalist with the New York Sun, generated controversy when she let her 9-year-old son ride the New York City subway alone. The newspaper column she wrote about the event started dialog about what constitutes reasonable risk.
In a recent New York Times article on overparenting, Nancy Gibbs argues that we have lost our ability to assess risk. There are no reports of a child ever being poisoned by a stranger handing out tainted Halloween candy and the odds of being kidnapped and killed by a stranger are about 1 in 1.5 million. Yet we have no fears about driving our child to school when the lifetime odds of dying in an automobile accident are about 1 in 100. Ms. Gibbs asserts that, “by worrying about the wrong things, we do actual damage to our children, raising them to be anxious and unadventurous.”
According to Barbara Minton, psychologist and published author, “Children need to be guided, protected, and provided for. But this doesn’t mean that children should be coddled and spoiled.”
Instead effective parenting requires a balance between emotion and science and a willingness to let go so a child can learn and grow.