The Star Online: Lifestyle: Parenting
The Star Online: Lifestyle: Parenting |
| Posted: A study discovers that children like being children, perhaps due to parenting. SEVEN-year-old Hannah Thome munched on a chocolate cookie after getting home from cheerleading camp last week and mulled the question, her brows furrowed over wide blue eyes. Did she want to be older? "No," the Tustin, California, youngster concluded. "I like being a kid. You get to do more things." Her mother recalls Tom Hanks wishing for adulthood in the 1988 film Big and remembers wishing for the same. But childhood has changed a lot since then. And that might be changing how children think about it. Kids today are increasingly likely to say they like being kids, a survey shows. A whopping 85% of children, aged eigth to 14 said, "I like being my age," television network Nickelodeon discovered in surveys of more than 900 children. That's an increase from already high numbers at the turn of the millennium. In that same survey, carried out by market research firm Harris Interactive, more than three out of four said they weren't in any hurry to grow up.  Heather Thome says she is no 'helicopter mum' to her daughters Charlotte (left), 3, and Hannah (right), 7, but she is devoted to them. The findings startle many childhood researchers, who have watched as modern kids cast off dolls earlier and gravitate towards all things teenage. Yet, the phenomenon seems to echo a shift already spotted among teens and twentysomethings – the lengthening road to adulthood. Nickelodeon chalks up the change among children to many of the same forces attributed to the longer transition to adulthood, including parents becoming more involved with their offspring. "They're in no rush to be older because they have it so good at home," said Nickelodeon executive vice president of research Ron Geraci. And during the tough economy, "they see what their parents are going through." The network said it pursued the survey so it could portray children and their families accurately on-screen. Children were surveyed online two years ago, and the sample was then weighted to reflect the racial and economic makeup of the country. Mindful of the trends, Nickelodeon recently launched The Haunted Hathaways, a new show about a closely-knit family, network officials said. If children are happier being children, the growing work of parenthood may be paying off. Several studies back up the idea that parents are stepping up efforts to nurture their children. Mums and dads have been spending more time with their kids than in decades, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of surveys stretching back to 1965. Parents are also spending more money, devoting a growing share of income to their children, according to a study published this year in the journal Demography. And more attend or volunteer at school meetings and events than in the '90s, a Child Trends analysis of federal data shows. Experts tie the booming investment in parenting to mounting anxiety about children making it in the US economy. Among the middle class, "a lot of parents feel they need to be their child's teacher, their coach, friend and chauffeur," said Sara Harkness, a professor of human development at the University of Connecticut. "There's an increasing intensification of what it means to be a good parent." In South Pasadena, California, Annalee Andres remembers her own parents – "really good parents who were really devoted" – deciding not to enroll her and her brother in soccer because it ate up their weekends. As parents today, "sometimes, we go to three soccer games a Saturday," Andres said. "My parents had a very full life of their own," said Andres, a mother of three. "That's a radical shift in my generation; the parents are child-centred." The give-and-take between children and parents also seems be changing. Obedience is seen as less important than it was decades ago, according to data from the General Social Survey, a project of the University of Chicago. UCLA researchers who followed middle-class Los Angeles families noted that parents often negotiate with children over household tasks, rather than simply ordering them. In many middle-class households, "there's a decreasing sense that parents and children are at odds," said Daniel Cook, an associate professor of childhood studies at Rutgers University-Camden. Furthermore, if children are free to do things they were once barred from, staying young might seem more attractive. "Perhaps growing up begins to sound like a responsibility as opposed to freedom," Cook said. In Los Angeles, some mums and dads have embraced parenting philosophies that look little like the way they were raised. Los Feliz, California, mother Karen Mejia said that her twin daughters decided to be vegetarian at the age of 10 – a choice she can't imagine being allowed to make at the same age. "My mum would have said, 'You eat your chicken,' and that's it," Mejia recalled. Her 13-year-old son is free to wear his hair long. "I was never allowed to talk to my parents the way my children are able to talk to me," said Mejia, who works as a nanny and embraces the philosophy of "nonviolent parenting" with her own children, avoiding rewards, bribes or punishments. "I grew up to be seen but not heard." Her husband sometimes asks, "Aren't you worried that they're going to treat us like we're their buddies?" Mejia recounted. But that doesn't seem like such a bad thing to her. "We treat our children as equals," she said. Some scholars believe long-standing changes in parenting have already shown up in adults. Twentysomethings today talk to their parents more often and more openly than baby boomers did at the same age, an AARP survey found last year. The Pew Research Center found that most young adults who weathered the recession by moving in with their parents were satisfied with their living situation. Baby boomers "didn't want to have the same hierarchy and distance with their kids" as their parents did, said Jeffrey Jensen Arnett, a Clark University research professor of psychology. "They wanted to be more like friends." Among parents of adults ages 18 to 29, 73% said they had a "mostly positive" relationship with their children, the Clark University Poll of Parents of Emerging Adults found this year. Yet, the changes in parenting could have drawbacks. Some adults fear the devotion to parenting has gone overboard, especially among middle-class families with time and money to obsess over their decisions. Americans have grown increasingly worried that having children infringes too much on parental freedom, the General Social Survey shows. Some complain that children are excessively sheltered as parenting goes into overdrive, and lament that parents who aren't totally consumed by childbearing are shunned. "If you want to read a magazine while they're on the playground, that's seen as selfish," said Linda Williamson, a Granada Hills, California, mother of two. "If you don't want to share a bed with your toddler, that's selfish." Williamson said she once battled an elementary school over letting her son bike alongside her a few blocks to school – something that other parents saw as unsafe. Writer Lenore Skenazy, who was flooded with media attention after letting her son ride the New York City subway by himself, said children "kept in bubbles" probably see little to envy in their parents' lives. "Would you rather be the princess or the lady-in-waiting?" said Skenazy, author of the book "Free-Range Kids." "Literally – the lady-in-waiting-in-the-car." In Tustin, Heather Thome says she is no "helicopter parent." She wants little Hannah to be able to handle the bumps and bruises of life. But she has also tried to make sure Hannah enjoys being a kid, remembering the responsibilities she herself had to shoulder after her parents divorced. "My daughter has been really funny about saying, 'I absolutely do not want children,'" Thome said. "She says, 'They're just too much work.'" Hearing that, Thome found herself wondering, "Gosh, is she saying that because of what she sees me doing around here?" –Los Angeles Times/ McClatchy-Tribune Information Services |
| Posted: [unable to retrieve full-text content]Professional F1 drivers often have parents who nurture – and hinder. |
| Posted: Entering your kids' 'monosyllabic zone'. SOMEONE has said: "You can tell a child is growing up when he stops asking where he came from and starts refusing to tell where he is going." When your children were younger, they insisted on telling you about everything they'd done – usually several times over, and very loudly, too. But as they enter the teenage years, they often sever the lines of communications! Your teens and tweens have entered the "monosyllabic zone", where every question is answered with a grunt, or by muttering a single word under their breath, if they're in a "particularly talkative mood". Most of the battles that we fight with our teens and tweens are actually the result of bad communication. This can be very frustrating indeed. In addition, as they slowly become more independent, they begin to rely more on other people and less on us for all their needs. And just as we did at their age, they will start confiding more in their close friends than in their mum and dad. They'll gradually find other people their own age to share that kind of small talk they used to share with us. Yes, we may have been their closest and most trusted adviser and consultant over the years, and they still need our wisdom and guidance – it's just that they also need their own space. At this point, you may feel hurt at being effectively shut out of your teen's life. But, believe it or not, it's a lot tougher for them. The fact is, becoming a teenager is a difficult stage in life, and one that even the happiest and most well-adjusted childhood can't totally prepare them for. With the raging hormones and all the psycho-socio-emotional changes taking place all at one go, it can be a lonely and isolating experience. That's why, although everyone wants to be young, no one ever wants to be 14 again – they remember how tough it was being that age. Of course, once the lines of communication start breaking down, it becomes harder to know what's going on in your teenage son or daughter's life. Just when you need to know what they're thinking – because you can't guess anymore – they stop telling you. So try not to jump to conclusions. Don't mistake their reluctance to communicate for outright rebellion. At the same time, don't try to overcompensate. If you are not careful, they'll misinterpret your healthy interest in what they're doing as a smothering form of "third degree" interrogation. For instance, when your teenagers ignores your repeated requests to clean their room, don't automatically assume they're being deliberately disobedient and unhelpful. They may well be preoccupied with and distracted by other things that are going on in their lives. So back off a bit, and give them the space they need. Don't wade in with all guns blazing, Try to keep things in perspective. After all, the world is full of wise, mature, honest, generous, wonderful people who just happen to be untidy – it's not that big a deal! In her article posted on Empowering Parents (the child behaviour help website) titled 5 Secrets For Communicating With Teenagers, Debbie Pincus, a therapist and mother of three teenagers, has rightly noted that you and your teen come from "two different worlds, two different perspectives – and a giant disconnect that can make communicating a real mystery". "Distance and explosiveness are often the only ways your teen knows how to communicate when things get intense – which of course only causes more conflict," she adds. Family life has a way of catching you off-guard. Its intensity gets under your skin and you end up losing your cool over all the wrong things. Minor incidents become full-scale dramas. With the benefit of hindsight, you realise they weren't that important in the first place. If your teen is normal, there'll never be any shortage of important battles to fight and real issues to deal with. That's why it's vital not to get drawn into endless minor conflicts that don't really make any difference in the long run. So think about how any issue fits into the context of your ongoing relationship with your son or daughter before wading in with both feet. Your authority as a parent is based entirely on the strength of your relationship with your teens or tweens. If they love and trust you, and know that you love and trust them, they will often do what you ask even if they don't really want to. But if they don't, and they can possibly avoid it, they won't. So the more your teens learn to tune you out, the harder you'll find to get through to them about anything important. Only draw a line in the sand when you are really sure that it has to be there. Otherwise, not only will your teen be tempted to shut you out altogether, they'll also be deprived of your help, support, love and advice on the things that matter when they desperately need it. Charis Patrick is a trainer and family life educator who is married with four children. E-mail her atstar2@thestar.com.my. |
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