The Hurried Child
by Carleton Kendrick Ed.M., LCSWThe pressure to grow up fast, to achieve early in the very great in middle-class America. There is no room today for the "late bloomer"... Children have to achieve success early or they are regarded as losers.
—David Elkind
The call-to-arms issued fifteen years ago by David Elkind in his groundbreaking book has unfortunately gone unheeded. Frighteningly, today's hurried child is much more hurried.
Sociologist J. Garbarino believes that because of this speed-up from childhood to adulthood, childhood may well become a "luxury." Forget The Grinch Who Stole Christmas. That's petty larceny. How about the Country That Stole Childhood? Now that's grand theft!
How are our children responding to our forcing them to grow up fast, as we insist we are simply trying to make them more "competent?"
The facts speak for themselves:
- Teens are killing themselves and each other at triple the rate they were twenty years ago.
- Teen pregnancy rates in the United States are the highest for any Western nation.
- Fourth-grade girls are dieting in record numbers.
- Serious sports-related injuries have increased several-hundred-fold.
- Twenty percent of youngsters are "flunking" kindergarten.
- Millions of children are medicated daily to make them more "educable" and "manageable" in school and at home
Heard enough about their carefree days of youth? Aren't you glad you had yours when you did?
Twenty years ago, I didn't see children in my therapy practice who resembled burnt-out, career-driven, Type A adults. I didn't see kids with chronic stress-related headaches, stomachaches and free-floating anxiety. I do now. Lots of them! Little kids. Big kids. Kindergarteners with stress headaches because they're not learning to read fast enough (even though developmentally they're doing just fine). Little girls who are afraid to tell their parents that they don't want to spend four hours a day practicing ice skating or gymnastics. Ninth graders who tell me they have to play competitive league basketball all summer or else their high school coach will think they're not serious about making next year's team. Parents of a fourth grader asking me if I think their daughter has the "right stuff" for an Ivy League college. FOURTH GRADE!!!
I was "allowed" to have a childhood. I played thousands of hours of sports, not supervised or controlled by adults. We worked out the "rules" of the games we played. We settled (most) arguments peacefully. We developed skills at our own pace. Everyone played. No one was denied playing time because they weren't "good."
My friends and I weren't pressured to be the best at everything, faster than everyone else. We hung out. We goofed around. We got in trouble. We got scared. We did our jobs. We were kids
Single-parent families...divorce...two-worker families...economic and job insecurity....I've heard the reasons why hurried, frightened parents hurry their children through childhood. I expect any day now to see a virtual reality childhood marketed.
So when you see your kid "doing nothing," whether she's sitting on the front steps, seeming to stare into space, or making a space colony under the dining room table, or re-reading a comic book for the 100th time, let her be. She's just taking a little time out of her busy day to have a childhood.
Read Carleton Kendrick's bio.
