The Trouble With Perfect: How Parents Can Avoid the Overachievement Trap and Still Raise Successful Children - Hardcover

Guthrie, Elisabeth, M.D.; Matthews, Kathy

 
9780767907514: The Trouble With Perfect: How Parents Can Avoid the Overachievement Trap and Still Raise Successful Children
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 0767907515 ISBN 13: 9780767907514
Verlag: Broadway Books, 2002

Inhaltsangabe

A thought-provoking examination of competitive parenting, which can lead to teen suicide, eating disorders, depression, and drug use, delves into the factors that drive parents to pressure their children, diminishing their chances for success later in life, and provides comforting wisdom and insight that helps to define the fine line between good parenting and pressure parenting.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Elisabeth Guthrie, M.D., is Clinical Director of the Learning Diagnostic Center at Blythedale Children’s Hospital in Valhalla, New York. The mother of three children, she lives in Riverdale, New York. Kathy Matthews is the bestselling author of numerous books, including The Savvy Mom’s Guide to Medical Care, which she coauthored with Dr. Pam Gallin. The mother of two sons, she lives in Pelham, New York.

Aus dem Klappentext

ve parenting has been on the rise since the 1980s, so have rates of teen suicide, eating disorders, depression, and drug use. Yet the cycle of "push parenting" doesn t show signs of slowing down. Our children today are competing with classmates who began listening to Mozart in utero and were enrolled in educational classes at ages two and three. Under these circumstances, parents feel that they cannot afford to opt out, or let their children opt out. What might become of them if they did?

Alarmed by the high numbers of unmotivated, burned-out youngsters seeking her psychiatric treatment, Dr. Elisabeth Guthrie set out to uncover not just the sources of their distress but also the factors that drive parents to pressure their children. Dr. Guthrie explores our confounding culture of overachievement and takes a sympathetic look at the pervasive guilt that accompanies raising children today.
Drawing on more than fifteen years of clinical experience, Dr. Gut

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Introducing the Seven Hypes

When did you first feel it? Was it when your son was the last in his play group to learn to speak? When your daughter's pre-school interview was a screaming-dervish tantrum disaster? When your son's batting in T-ball was right out of Monty Python? When your middle-schooler wasn't recommended for a single honors class?

We all face it at some point: the realization that our children, at least in some respects, aren't the best, brightest, prettiest, fastest, most enviable and perfect specimens who ever walked the earth. It can be a devastating feeling. One minute you are living the fantasy--beaming as your child accepts the Heisman trophy, Nobel Peace Prize, or National Book Award--and the next you are sitting in the dust with this rather, well, ordinary child.

For most of us as parents, these moments of recognizing our child's frailties are an opportunity for growth: Ideally, we empathize with our child and create an appropriate strategy for dealing with the situation. In many cases, the only strategy is acceptance and love. Maybe our son won't be the Sammy Sousa of Westchester. Maybe our daughter will be better off in another nursery school. Sometimes, a bit of help is in order. A check with the pediatrician can confirm that a nonspeaking toddler doesn't have a hearing problem that's affecting speech. A check with the guidance counselor at school may reassure you about your son's nonhonors status, or encourage you to follow procedures for him to try an honors course on a trial basis.

But wait a minute . . . Are you thinking that isn't the kind of help you had in mind? Are you thinking that you know a top-notch coach for that T-baller? Are you thinking that a letter from your neighbor, a heavy-hitting fund-raiser at the nursery school, could make the difference with the headmaster and convince her your daughter doesn't always act like she needs an exorcism? Perhaps you're thinking that a few calls to teachers, promises of tutors, and maybe even taking on a serious PTA job could convince that middle-school principal to be a little more liberal with his honors-class placements?

As we try to sort out what strategy makes sense--the coach or maybe a bit of backyard practice; the donation or maybe a more low-key nursery school--we can't avoid the stress of these decisions. Actually the stress of parenting is made up of these kind of decisions, and they become more complicated as our lives become more demanding and our culture becomes more competitive. It's very hard to sort out what's a sensible choice when we're feeling the impulse to push our children.

As Mel Levine, a highly esteemed developmental pediatrician, says, "Adults can be specialists; children must be generalists." We can decide we're good at teaching and not tennis, or good at financial research and not cleaning. We make our life choices based on these proclivities and skills, and, with luck and determination, we find roles that suit us and make us happy. But our kids have to be good at math, English, science, sports, community service, leadership, foreign languages, and so on. As the bar has been raised for them, the stress and pressure to perform becomes more and more intense. Unfortunately, a large part of this stress and pressure is due to the demands we, as parents, make on them. We want our kids to do well and get ahead. This is reasonable and important. But we don't want to push them so hard that the results are negative. Indeed, this is the theme of this book: How do you encourage your child to achieve in a healthy way? How do you judge how much nudging is good and how much is counterproductive?

Some parents don't care: They're going to push no matter what. Parents of this sort are not reflective or introspective. It's very difficult to get them to change course or even consider reassessing their goals. But you, if you are reading this book, are probably different. You're open to change. You're worried about achieving the right balance in your child's life. You're willing to ask the right questions. I've seen many parents like you, too; parents who are concerned about the stressful world their children are entering and how they can help them achieve without destroying the spark that makes them unique.

Unfortunately, many of today's parents, many of us, go at this whole parenting thing full tilt. For reasons, some good and some misguided, that we'll explore, we feel that our child's ultimate success is all up to us, and that the goal is to win, or to get our kids to win. This is not news to you. You've read the articles about test prepping for the best colleges that rivals astronaut training; bar mitzvahs that demand the financial and emotional fortitude of a Broadway producer; and athletic competition so fierce that it has actually been fatal to at least one parent.

Why are we so competitive when it comes to our children? Why are we convinced that it's so important for them to have a dazzling resume? To have a "passion"? To stand out, in some way, from the crowd? What is it that makes intelligent, sensible parents prep their young child for an IQ test, or hire a sixty-dollar-an-hour coach for their beginning Little Leaguer, or drive a half hour after a busy work day to bring a toddler to an art class when everybody might be happier at home enjoying dinner or bath time?

What I have learned from countless parents is that just about no one wants to push, but most feel they must. They've come to believe in a fearful and anxious way that they as parents or, more crucially, their children will fall short in the relentless competition of everyday life if they don't keep pushing.

The great, gnawing fear is that if you don't push, if you relax and let the chips fall where they may, your child will fail. Or at least not succeed. That's the fear-inducing truth that most of us wrestle with when we try to decide if we should call the teacher and challenge a grade, if we should sign our child up for SAT coaching starting in eighth grade, if we should encourage our child to try out for the crew team because we've heard that Ivy League schools are high on rowing.

But is it true? Is it true that our children need us to give them that extra edge? Is it possible that it can be counterproductive to do so?

As parents, we're used to following our impulse: When the baby cries, we tend to her. When the toddler falls, we comfort him. To some degree, we must rely on our impulses to guide us in our child-rearing. And if our impulse to push, prod, and maneuver our child is so strong that it almost becomes an imperative, then perhaps it's an impulse that should be obeyed.

But most of us do have a little voice inside that says, "This is crazy; this is too much."

First, of course, we must acknowledge that people are naturally competitive. There are basic human impulses that make us want to be the best, make us want our children to be the best. In the version of the jungle that most of us inhabit, the richest man gets the prettiest girl (and the biggest house, the most luxurious car, and the most frequent-flyer miles). But, fortunately, we all have minds and souls and are able to conceptualize a vast panoply of satisfactions that life has to offer beyond a babe, a stretch, and five thousand square feet of living space.

Sad to say, despite our higher reasoning abilities, some notions endure--many just vague, unrecognized concepts in the back of our minds--that direct our behavior as parents. These notions--or "hypes"--are usually unexamined and even unrecognized, but they can cloud our decisions and encourage us to act in ways that are irrational, yes, but more important, damaging to our children. At first glance, these hypes seem like a monolithic force: difficult to assess, impossible to resist. But I think you can separate out...

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Verlag
Broadway Books
Erscheinungsdatum
2002
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0767907515
ISBN 13 
9780767907514
Einband
Gebundene Ausgabe
Auflage
1
Anzahl der Seiten
248
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Verantwortliche Person
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