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In 1981 psychologist Dr. David Elkind published his bestselling book
The Hurried Child. He described the increasing demands placed on
children by parents and other adults to achieve and succeed. Elkind contended
that these “hurried” children were being robbed of their childhood
and in the process were vulnerable to such adverse consequences as burning
out in school, using drugs and alcohol, and feeling helpless.
Borrowing from the title of Elkind’s book, I gave a number of
presentations for parents in the late 1980s called “The Pressurized
Child.” I attempted to capture the pressure that many children and
adolescents feel on a daily basis and how they are left with a noticeable
absence of joy and spontaneity in their lives. I also discussed strategies
for implementing more realistic expectations and challenges for children
that permitted them to experience fun and a zest for life. I have continued
to advance this message in my seminars about raising resilient children.
The topic of the hurried or pressurized child is as relevant, if not
more so, today as when Elkind first wrote his book. Behind most pressurized
youngsters are pressurized parents and other caregivers. I continue to
be impressed by the number of parents who lament that not only do they
have limited time for their children, but their children have limited
time for them as schedules are filled with sports, dance, art lessons,
and homework. “Free time” is a shrinking commodity in many
households. Even certain activities that have the potential for providing
enjoyment and fun, such as youth sports, have become pressure cookers
for far too many children.
Given my interest in the phenomenon of the pressurized child (and family),
I was drawn to a recent article in The Boston Globe titled, “Whistles
blow for alpha families to call a timeout: Some wonder if youths are driven
too hard” written by Tatsha Robertson. It focused on the efforts
of Ridgewood, New Jersey and other towns in the United States to examine
the demands that are placed upon children. The article starts, “Residents
of this affluent suburb (Ridgewood) of New York City are so competitive,
at work and play, that they speak proudly of living in an ‘alpha
town.’ Mothers and fathers charge hard on Wall Street, then come
home and encourage their children to show the same go-go spirit in activities.
French lessons can begin as early as age 3, resume-building at 6, and
some children play on five sports teams at once.”
Community leaders in Ridgewood organized a meeting to encourage parents
to slow down, enjoy time with their children, and emphasize the importance
of having fun rather than being the best. Robertson writes, “In
a smattering of cities and towns from New Jersey to Nebraska, educators,
coaches, and psychologists are preaching a similar message to local audiences—against
the grain of a national trend that Ridgewood represents to the extreme.
Concerned about stressed, overscheduled children and the growing number
of sports-related injuries to their young bodies, along with rundown parents
with whistles and scoresheet constantly in hand, these advocates are calling
for a return to the days of hopscotch, tag, and hide-and-seek, when childhood
play was mostly about fun, not bringing home a trophy.”
Dr. Alvin Rosenfeld, a New York psychiatrist and author of The Over-Scheduled
Child observes, “What’s happened is that childhood has
become professionalized. Parenting has become the most competitive sport
in America.” In response to parents signing up their children to
play in several sports at once, Rosenfeld noted, “What is sad is
despite all the evidence that this is not good, the social pressure to
do this is if you don’t, then you are considered a remiss parent.”
In the Globe article Robertson reports that a number of communities
are taking steps to lessen the frenetic pace of parents and children.
In Minneapolis, city leaders are seeking 1,000 families to “pledge
to have a family dinner four nights a week. Local leaders in other parts
of the state are asking recreation centers to create noncompetitive sports
leagues. In small hamlets across the country, groups of parents have started
unorganized ball games where winning is not the main goal and parents
sit quietly on the sidelines. In Ridgewood, the school district has designated
one Tuesday evening every March as a time of no extracurricular activity.
In Sydney, New York, a town of 4,000 near Binghamton, the school superintendent
has set aside Wednesdays as activity-free nights, evening shifting Board
of Education meetings to other days.”
As many of my readers know, I strongly support children and adolescents
being involved in sports and exercise, in art and music activities. I
welcome their participation in volunteer endeavors in which they learn
to give to others. However, when these activities fill every waking hour
of a child’s life, when they are cast in competitive terms and used
as criteria for “good parenting,” we must pause and question,
as Elkind did almost a quarter of a century ago, whether we are indeed
creating “hurried,” anxious children.
Communities designating a day during the week when meetings or events
will not be scheduled helps to remind us of the importance of family time
and “free time.” Although the concept of scheduling “free
time” may seem like an oxymoron, it serves to highlight that children
not only require some down time, but they also need time to engage in
fun activities with their families. An afternoon and/or evening without
scheduled sports or other activities does not guarantee that families
will use this time to interact or have fun together, but it may prompt
parents to consider their interactions with and expectations for their
children.
At many of my parenting workshops I have questioned the excessiveness
of scheduled activities for our children, including the amount of homework
they are required to do (I may address the issue of homework in a future
article). In response, some parents have said that when they have built
in “free time,” their children have desired to use this time
playing video games. I have suggested that if that is the case, parents
should join their children in playing such games (it is also a way of
monitoring the content of the games), but that they should also set limits
on the time involved in these games.
Recently, I saw parents in my practice who were very concerned about
their 7-year-old daughter and their 10-year-old son. The mother remarked,
“They both seem so stressed. I’m not certain what we should
do, but I feel we should do something.” She smiled and said, “Maybe
they inherited stress from my husband and me. All we do in our house is
rush. Talk about a hyperactive, stressed out family. We can’t seem
to find time to just have fun.”
We discussed cutting back on the number of activities in which their
children were involved. In response to the mother’s comment, “We
can’t seem to find time to just have fun,” I suggested they
consider ways to “play.” The father asked what I meant and
I described the importance of being spontaneous and imaginative. I shared
that I had coached my sons in a basketball league and enjoyed doing so,
but I also had fun just going outside and throwing a football with them
or picking up a basketball and shooting hoops without keeping score. I
also told them of my enjoyment “interviewing” my sons about
events in their life when they were preschoolers; I used an audiotape
cassette recorder since this was pre-videotape recorder days. When I played
back the interview for my sons, they enjoyed listening to what they had
said. It was a simple activity that elicited joy and closeness.
I also recommended that they read my good friend Dr. Ned Hallowell’s
book The Childhood Roots of Adult Happiness. Ned’s ideas
resonate with those conveyed by Sam Goldstein and myself in our writings
about resilience. Ned warns, “We are overemphasizing the importance
of grades and other measurable achievements, while we are underemphasizing
the importance of resourcefulness, optimism, ‘people skills,’
a can-do attitude, creativity, and the many forms of connectedness, such
as friendship, family, community, spirituality, love of nature, team play,
and so forth. It is fine to emphasize getting good grades, as long as
you balance this by equally emphasizing and teaching the tools of emotional
health.”
Ned extols the importance of play as a source of happiness. He defines
play as “any activity in which there is room for spontaneous invention
and/or change. . . . The opposite of play is doing exactly what you are
told to do. Memorization by rote is the opposite of play; on the other
hand, thinking up a mnemonic device to help you memorize a series of items
can be very playful. . . . The reason to encourage children to play is
not merely that play is a wonderful end in itself—although it is
that. As a child plays, he learns a special skill—the skill of play—and
it is a skill that is more useful than any other. The skill of play, of
being able to make creative use of time no matter where you are or what
you are doing, is the skill that lies behind all discoveries, all advances,
all creative activity.”
Ned offers some tips about play including: “make time for play;
limit electronic play; don’t overschedule your children with enriching
activities that eliminate time for unstructured play; don’t turn
youth sports into a pressure-packed, hypercompetitive drama; try to find
a place where your children can be left alone to play; and keep your family
alive with humor.”
As I reflected on Ned’s advice, I thought about my grandchildren.
I have three, the oldest of whom, Maya, is 27 months. I love interacting
with Maya, Teddy, and Sophia. I love holding them and smiling at them.
I marvel at how playful we are with young children and how playful they
are. When the family was over for Thanksgiving, I was vividly reminded
of the countless adventures that young children experience in what to
an adult may appear to be an ordinary environment. It was such fun to
observe Maya jumping up and falling down on our bed as if she had discovered
the most interesting toy in the world or running from one room to the
next and laughing as I caught up with her, or Teddy simply lying on his
back looking at and touching different objects on his “3-D Activity
Gym.” As his actions caused the objects to move, I could not help
but think that he was learning in a very playful way that he had some
“control” over what transpired in his world. And when I held
Sophia and she smiled in response to my smile, my own sense of playfulness
was enriched.
I know that the kinds of playful activities in which we engage preschool
children cannot last forever. However, I do believe that playfulness is
a lifetime activity. When I have recommended to parents that they find
time to play with their children in the sense that Ned defines play, I
have frequently heard, “I wish I could, but who has the time. They
have soccer, Little League, dance lessons, Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts,
and hours of homework.” All of these are important activities and
several hold the potential of being playful, but we must ensure that we
build in opportunities in which we play with our children, in which our
children observe us being playful, and in which we simply enjoy the moment.
When I hear the refrain, “Who has the time to do these things?”
I ask a question I have found myself asking more and more lately, namely,
“What is the alternative if we don’t do these things?”
I want children to achieve and succeed, but I want their achievement and
success not to be measured solely by their grades or SAT scores or how
many goals they score in a game, or to what colleges they are admitted.
Success should also be measured by their ability to be playful, to be
spontaneous, to take realistic risks, to connect with others, and to laugh.
I would love to see “hurried,” “pressurized,”
or anxious youngsters transformed into children who never lose their playfulness,
who never take themselves too seriously, and similar to preschool children
such as Maya, Teddy, and Sophia, experience joy, learning, and creativity
in the simplest of activities.
During this holiday season when schedules and demands can become very
hectic, I hope that we all take time to discover these simplest of activities
that will enrich our lives and the lives of our children.
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