1
With the Best Intentions
Kathy and Paul are a little anxious. After three years of trying, they are thrilled to finally be parents, and Julia is a delightful eight month old with a wonderful disposition. But lately they have noticed that Julia isn’t developing at anywhere near the pace of her cousin Andrew who, although a month younger, is already crawling and even saying Ma-Ma and Da-Da. “I’m trying to be calm about all of this,” says Kathy. “The pediatrician tells me that her development is well within the normal range … but I’m worried that maybe Julia is bored and will become lazy. She’s home alone with the sitter all day. I really want her to be smart.” So she and Paul sit down to order a kit that includes videos, books, and a chart to track a baby’s development. It seems like a good program to ask the sitter to follow since the ad promises it will “nurture and enrich the development of your child’s intellect.”
It is Tuesday at 6:45 A.M. Belinda, age seven, is still asleep. School doesn’t start until nine and her mother usually lets her sleep until 7:30. But not on Tuesdays. That’s the day Belinda has a 7:30 A.M. piano lesson. From it she goes directly to school, which lasts until three. Then the baby-sitter drives Belinda to gymnastics for the 4:00-6:30 class. While Tuesday is the busiest day, the rest of the week is filled up too, with religious school and choir practice, ballet, and (Belinda’s favorite) horseback riding. “She’s pretty worn out by the end of the day,” her mother laments. “But you know, she’s much more alert for the morning piano lesson than she was for the Friday afternoon time slot we had before.” She pauses for a moment and then says, thoughtfully, “Kids today are so much busier than we used to be. I’m not really sure it is a good thing. But I want to give her the advantages I didn’t have.” Then she opens the door to Belinda’s room and gently pats her daughter’s back to awaken her.
Tate, age twelve, is one heck of a hockey player. He started skating at two. At first, his father, a former prep school hockey star himself, did the teaching. A few months later, Tate started formal lessons. By age seven, Tate showed real promise and started playing in his New Jersey town’s Youth Hockey Program on a demanding schedule. Tate is so good now, he’s on the county all-star team and plays aggressive hockey year-round. He has four practices a week, with early morning ice times and Saturday games. For tournaments and championship games he has traveled as far as Virginia and Maine. Next year the coach wants him to practice six days a week. Sure, the time commitment is large—not only for Tate, but also for his parents, who attend every game, and for his younger sister, Morgan, who has to go too. But his mother, Elaine, says, “I really enjoy watching him play. And besides,” she adds ruefully, “he still needs me to tie his skates for him. Of course he knows how to tie them, but most kids he plays with are fifteen and can get their laces much tighter. I don’t want him to be at a disadvantage just because he’s younger.”
Seeking out a curriculum for an eight month old? Scheduling a seven year old’s week so tightly that the grown-up in charge needs a Palm Pilot to keep track? Structuring an adult life around a commitment to tie laces on a twelve year old’s hockey skates?
Sure sounds hyper—so long as we are talking about other parents. But when it’s our own child’s future we are trying to get just right, it’s a little different. What good parent would not spend $79.95 for enrichment materials that promise some extra stimulation, especially for a kid we’re a little worried might be lagging behind? We may be busy already, but if our child has some particular talent or a hankering to try a new activity, and we can find a tiny window of time through which to squeeze it into our schedule, why not give it a go? And what parent wouldn’t help his child tighten his skate laces if that small effort turns out to make a big difference to him because hockey is so important in his life? And to be perfectly frank, his prowess with a puck gives us a real charge too.
Meanwhile, though, as we labor ceaselessly, sincerely, and earnestly at doing all the right things to get our children off to a great start in life, many of us moms and dads are feeling overworked, overwhelmed, and underappreciated. Of course we love our kids. We want the world for them and would do just about anything to give them what they need to succeed, first in their little-kid worlds and later in the grown-up game of Life. Yet in trying so hard to do everything we can for them, many of us (including yours truly, the authors) aren’t sure when to say when. We sense that our family lives are out of whack, but we aren’t sure why. We know we are doing too much for our kids, but don’t know where it might be okay to cut back—especially since every time we pick up the paper, turn on the news, or try to lose ourselves in the pages of a magazine, someone else is adding something new to the list of things we are supposed to be doing for our children to make sure they turn out right.
We authors do it too. One of us recalls how, as a young and inexperienced mother, it seemed vitally important to provide only the most natural of diets for her baby daughter—nothing but breast milk and homemade, organically grown baby food, chopped and steamed in large batches, frozen in individual-sized portions. The effort was huge but theoretically worthwhile: All those reports linking pesticides and food additives to allergies and childhood cancers were really scary.
Life so often writes its own ironic endings, however, and as it turned out this same scrupulously fed child turned out to be the one of four children who was constantly sick—eventually requiring daily antibiotics to stave off the many infections that plagued her. In time, her health problems were traced to a genetic immune deficiency, which she eventually outgrew—as her mother also outgrew that naive conviction that life could be controlled and shaped by her own intensive efforts. That sincere, well-intentioned belief is the essence of hyper-parenting.
So often we can afford to relax—even in the face of conventional wisdom, let alone the latest scientific advisories! The other of us had a child who loved chocolate, and as a young child begged for some each evening before dinner. Although a little fearful of the nutritional and dietetic implications, her parents nonetheless decided to try it her way. What happened? She remains slender, and ten years later has missed a total of one day of school because of illness.
But it is tough to “try” to be relaxed, especially when we so desperately fear being negligent. What we parents really need as much as, or perhaps even more than, all that important advice about how to raise our children is a reminder that no one ever gets it all just right—and that most children turn out well anyway. Not perfect, but good enough. And, as we will see in chapters to come, that is the best we can hope for anyway.
We authors don’t think we are looking at the past through chic pink glasses when we reminisce about how much simpler everyday life used to be—at least for white, middle-class families. Not perfect, mind you, but certainly less complicated. Most of us attended...
