Are We Hurrying Our Children to Grow Up Too Soon? Is the trend to get children i

Question

Are We Hurrying Our Children to Grow Up Too Soon?

Is the trend to get children into school before kindergarten a good thing? Or are we pushing our children too much?

According to developmental psychologist David Elkind author of The Hurried Child, many Americans are hurrying their children to achieve academically and socially and forcing them into independence too soon (something he says they come to regret when those same children reach adolescence).

Children’s lives are way too organized, and too jam-packed, leaving them with not enough time to play, imagine, and follow their own interests. According to Elkind, Piaget believed that children learn primarily from their own spontaneous exploration of things and a subsequent reflective abstraction from those activities. Elkind agrees. And while praising the good that it does for impoverished children, Elkind blames Head Start for starting what he calls the “pernicious idea” that children have to be formally educated while they are toddlers.

Generate discussion on the following point

Evidence of the pressure to grow up fast is the pressure to engage in organized competitive sports and to perfect skills. Schedules and supervision have often times replaced spontaneity and freedom. Lessons, not make believe, are the rule.

Explanation / Answer

Many children who are pressured into excelling by parents or teachers may gradually withdraw from them and shut down.Such children may think they're not important or loved enough by parents unless they're perfect, a standard to which few, if any, children can achieve. A child who is constantly berated for her grades or shamed when she brings home her report card may ultimately begin to feel anger or resentment towards parents. Parents may notice their child engaging in increasingly antisocial behaviors such as refusal to follow rules or guidelines, lying, acting out, verbal outbursts and refusing to do homework. Stress from parents expecting A's may have a negative effect on school-age children, leading to not only potential behavior problems but also chronic stress. Several signs of stress caused by academic pressure may include, but are not limited to, withdrawal, an increasing desire for solitude, outbursts of anger, depression and physical manifestations such as stomachaches and headaches. Encouraging the child to maintain constant A's or pressuring him/her to excel in an academic environment, regardless of his age, may create tension and anxiety in the child. Many schools force too much material onto the normally and naturally developing mind of young children and may inadvertently push children,especially boys into looking like they have ADHD when they might not. This problem is endemic to the entire educational enterprise, starting with preschool. Worse, the emphasis on “an overly strict attention to rules, procedure, and rote memorization” has extended even into the cradle, manifesting as “helpful guidance” to parents about how to “prepare” babies for future academic demands. The approach is displacing commonsense, intuitive nurturing time with “schoolwork” at home and in preschools across the country at ever younger ages. Schools continue to use entrance testing regardless of its unreliability, and the pressure some parents feel to secure places in prestigious schools by the time a child reaches kindergarten has induced them to push their children to be “successful” test takers at ever younger ages, reaching down even into infancy. Parents themselves begin “teaching to the test” by drilling their toddlers on vocabulary, numbers, letters, and other items usually encountered on kindergarten readiness tests, well before babies’ and toddlers’ minds are ready to appreciate and integrate this knowledge. There are a number of potential solutions to these challenges, and they fall into two broad classes. First, parents can work within the existing public or private school system and with individual teachers to adapt the classroom and its curriculum to meet their child’s needs. The second solution is to seek an alternative education. Both solutions can be successful.

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