The next two articles concern children--educating them, then disciplining them. I found them to be of interest.
Structure comes first, Anne Marie Owens, National Post, first of a series of articles on the education of the micromanaged child, Oct. 4, 03
There is an excerpt, then links to the other articles in the series. You judge for yourself whether the child ends by being captive to someone else’s “plans” and then has difficulty in adjusting to managing himself/herself as an adult. Is this the perfect education to fit the individual into group structure—and group think? Would you want it? There is no denying the children seem to achieve well academically – but at what cost? Where is the time for the mind to contemplate and judge, to discriminate between and to choose alternatives for oneself – to learn to live as an individual? NJC
The highly scheduled, multi-tasking child is the goal of the many parents who believe that to give their children a head start they need to get them on the fast track early. First in a four-part series.
'We wake up every day at six o'clock in the morning during the week. The two girls, the youngest, they have to practise their chess on the computer with their coach in Ottawa. They spend one hour on the computer -- always in the morning, because the mind is freshest then.
"Then, there's school, and after school, one girl has a private teacher from 3:30 till 5. Then we have ping-pong. The ping-pong teacher comes at 5 for three hours. While one is playing, the others do homework. Every half hour, we change positions."
There follows a description of a highly micromanaged life -- for the whole family.
When I ask whether she ever wearies of the pace, she says matter-of-factly, "I do it because I want to keep them busy."
"When I was young, I had nothing like this," Brunot says. "I was an only child. I wanted to do swimming. I wanted to do gymnastics. My dad, he didn't care about things like this. He just liked to go outside, visit monuments; we would go to the sea."
"I thought, 'When I have my kids, I want them to practise everything.... I want them to do a lot more things, so that when they get older, they can do everything.' "
It is the mantra for those who believe in the necessity of a jam-packed schedule for their children: Keep them busy. Allow them to try everything. Get them on the fast track early.
The micromanaged child has become the poster child for a new generation of achievers. They are signed up in utero for the right daycare; primed for early brain development with a steady roster of Baby Einstein videos and infant playgroups in French immersion; attend tutoring programs even before the age of 3; and bookend their school days with a loaded extracurricular program that takes in everything from basketball to second-language classes, from enrichment sessions to music lessons.
It has been more than two decades since the publication of The Hurried Child, the book that first raised the alarm about a generation of children being hurried around by their parents, and today's children are being directed in their daily lives more than ever before.
It is a movement driven in part by the safety concerns that inspire the demand for supervised activities, in part by the age-old competition to keep up with the Joneses, and in part by high-achieving parents convinced micromanaging is the only way they can ensure their kids will stay out of trouble and score future success. It is a movement that already has incredible momentum and a powerful pull on any parents trying to do what's best for their children. Spend enough time talking to these parents and it is impossible not to feel the pull.
The pace is maintained not only by stay-at-home parents, who might have more time to devote to such frenzied schedules, but also by dual working moms and dads, who stretch their own schedules ever thinner to make sure their children don't miss out on something the neighbourhood consensus deems necessary to child development. Even most nannies nowadays need to be drivers, so they can quickly transport their charges from one activity to another.
[. . . .]
Their mother, regarded with awe by the organizers at the Kumon tutoring centre to which she regularly takes her children for her ability to "run her family like an army," says the payoff makes up for any regrets about lost downtime. The children are all doing well in school and know their routine so well, there are rarely complaints.
"When I try something, it's better that they all begin together, so that when we do activities, all are involved," she says. "It's easier for me if they are doing the same. Otherwise it's not equal. This way, we know this is what we do every day. It is their routine."
William Doherty, a professor of family social science at the University of Minnesota and a founding member of an organization called Putting Family First, which is urging a backlash against overscheduled lives, worries that parenting has become a competitive sport, "with the trophies going to the busiest."
"We are raising our children in a culture that defines a good parent as an opportunity provider in a competitive world," he argues in his latest essay, "Time Famine in Families," where he says that insecure parents never really know if they've done enough for their children in this new hyper-charged climate.
"Keeping our children busy at least means they are in the game."
[. . . .]
The other articles in the series are:
Do it for the baby The highly scheduled, multi-tasking child is the goal of the many parents who believe that to give their children a head start they need to get them on the fast track early. This is the second in a four-part series. Last updated: 10/6/2003
'There's not enough homework'
MATH TO THE MAX: Children partake in extra tutoring at The Learning Paradise in Mississauga.Glenn Lowon, National PostThe highly scheduled, multi-tasking child is the goal of the many parents who believe that to give their children a head start they need to get them on the fast track early. This is the third in a four-part series. Last updated: 10/7/2003
Did you study for your exam, dear? The highly scheduled, multi-tasking child is the goal of many parents who believe that to give their children a head start they need to get them on the fast track early. Final instalment in a four-part series. Last updated: 10/8/2003
Additionally, this article is of interest on parenting.
There's no other name for it -- narcissism Sure, it might be tempting to sneer at the news, reported in this paper last week, that North American parents are now naming their children after luxury brands. How tacky, one might tsk-tsk, to name one's child Chanel or Porsche or Chivas; what an indictment of the pervasive grip of consumerism. Last updated: 10/7/2003
