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Whatever Happened to Childhood? By Becky Sweat With the increased expectations aimed at children in today's society, is it possible that they are growing up too quickly?
he shows my kids watch are not exactly like The Brady Bunch or The Partridge Family," sighs Buffalo Grove, Illinois, resident, Ellen Shapiro. Favorite programs of her 16-, 14- and 12-year-olds are The OC, Gilmore Girls and One Tree Hill. Her concern is that "in all those shows the young people are always hooking up, they're in serious relationships, and there's a lot of talk about sex. When the kids watch these shows, they think they need to be in serious relationships too." She knows many young teens and even some preteens with boyfriends and girlfriends. "The thinking among the kids is that you really need to have a boyfriend or girlfriend from the sixth grade on -- at least if you want to be cool," Shapiro adds. This, she says, is so different from when she was a young teen. "I was just happy to go out with my friends and have fun. I wasn't thinking about pairing up with someone."
The adult issues his 8- and 10-year-old children -- increasing threats of violence in particular -- have to face also dismay Brad Johnson, a father in Orland Park, Illinois. "My second grader's class recently took a field trip to the police station to hear a talk about safety measures in case there's a school shooting or terrorist attack. There's also routine 'lockdown' drills at the elementary school," he relates. "My kids are having to confront a lot more really heavy issues than I ever did at their age." For Barb Matusik of Lake Villa, Illinois, the adult world has invaded the lives of her three children (ages 7, 10 and 11) by making them feel much more pressured than what she experienced as a child. "School has become more stressful at an early age for kids," she observes. "They're doing topics like algebra and geometry in elementary school, which I didn't get until high school. They also have a lot more homework at their age than I did."
At first, these may seem like unrelated concerns by parents who are just reflecting on "the good old days" of their childhood -- but there's a lot more to it than that. These examples illustrate the depth and scope of a serious problem in our nation: Children are growing up much too fast, and the carefree innocence of childhood is becoming a thing of the past.
David Elkind, senior resident scholar at Tufts University and author of The Hurried Child: Growing Up Too Fast, Too Soon (Da Capo Lifelong Books, 25th edition, 2006), has been very outspoken about this trend. "Our society is compressing childhood more and more to where children are not children for very long," he says. "Children are under tremendous pressure to 'be mature' and to 'grow up' when they have not had the chance to develop emotional maturity." What changes in our modern world have caused this loss of childhood? Elkind believes it comes down to three main factors: Media hard sell "There's a tremendous pressure in our society for children to become 'sexually precocious' at a younger and younger age," says William Doherty, professor of family social science at the University of Minnesota and author of Take Back Your Kids (2000). He sees this trend in the sexual images that are portrayed in magazine articles, television and movies, video games and in music videos that are marketed to preteens.
With so much sex and adult story lines in the media, many kids have their minds on sex and adult relationships long before they get into high school. Sometimes parents will encourage their young children to date as well.
Schools too have had a part to play. It's not unusual for elementary and middle schools to sponsor dances for fifth and sixth graders. "Instead of just having activity nights, they're kind of promoting the idea that kids should be paired up and doing adolescent type of activities," observes Sharon Dunham, sixth grade counselor at Hadley. This is more than most fifth and sixth graders can handle, she says. "They're coming from an experience where they were having recess the previous year and now all of sudden they feel this need to have a boyfriend or girlfriend," Dunham says. "It pushes them out of childhood and I don't think they're ready [for] it, especially in the sixth grade." Pressure to compete Another factor is the overscheduling of childhood. Many parents worry that if they don't enroll their kids in a lot of extracurricular activities, their children will be missing out or be left behind. Sometimes, though, parents involve their children in so many outside activities that they really have very little time left just to play, have fun and be kids. Marie Schalke, principal of Twin Groves Middle School in Buffalo Grove, says she knows elementary- and middle-school-aged children who take part in two or more extracurricular activities each day after school. "Some kids have one activity after another all the time. They may have basketball early in the evening and when that's over, they go to hockey -- on the same night," she notes. Weekends, too, are often very busy, going from one sporting event or other activity to the next. Performing well has become so important, that many parents enlist the services of private coaches and personal trainers to help their children succeed. Often, as was noted in the beginning of the article, kids have to really push themselves to take part in all the extracurricular activities and still do well in school.
Kids are also feeling pressure to perform well academically. "We live in a very competitive world," says Linda Marks, Ph.D., superintendent of Golf School District 67 in Morton Grove, Illinois. "Most parents today want their children to go onto college and they want them to go to good colleges, which means that they have to get good grades. That puts a certain pressure on children that their parents probably didn't have." She says parents are telling their children at a very early age: "You have to get good grades." "You need to get into the accelerated classes." and "You have to get into a good college." Marks says that most of the present adult population, when they were growing up, "probably didn't hear that kind of thing until they were in high school. But today, parents are probably way more aggressive about making sure their children are doing well in school."
News ad nauseam A third factor taking away from childhood is the 24-7 cable and Internet news coverage that many households have access to nowadays. "It is much harder to filter frightening news stories away from kids compared to a generation ago when many families may have had only one television with just three channels, and then, there was just the one hour of news in the evening," notes Kyle Sieck, seventh grade counselor at Hadley Junior High. He knows kids at his school that watched Saddam Hussein's execution video. "It is absolutely crazy to think that someone at this age has been exposed to something like that," he says.
For one thing, young children might not understand that the events being reported on the news are hundreds or thousands of miles away, or that they're isolated occurrences. "If they see too many negative news stories on television, they may start to feel that the violence is all around them in their own town and feel frightened when they really don't need to be," says Nancy Lashbrook, social worker department chair for District 54 in Schaumburg, Illinois, and a social worker at Hoover Elementary School. All this fear and anxiety takes away a child's ability to be carefree and have a normal childhood, she says.
Does it matter? Okay, kids in our society are growing up faster these days than they did in past generations. But, you might ask, what's really the big deal if a 10-year-old lives or acts like a 15-year-old? There are many reasons why children should not be rushed into growing up. First and foremost, childhood provides them the time they need to mature and learn critical lessons. Without a long enough childhood, children do not learn many important relationship and life skills. A big part of childhood is being able to spend time playing with peers. This is very important, Elkind says, because "it gives children the opportunity to learn about themselves, to create and to innovate, and to learn how to make independent judgments. They also learn mutual respect and how to work with others."
Children who are rushed to grow up before they are ready or who have too many adult-level pressures put on them may develop stress-related health problems such as nervousness, hyperactivity, eating and sleeping disorders, and headaches and stomach problems. But even if they don't develop any of these problems, children who are hurried out of childhood still miss out on a lot of the simple pleasures of growing up, of innocent fun and happy experiences that they should be able to look back on when they are adults. "Play gives children a sense of enjoyment that they can call upon later in life. When they're adults and feeling down or stressed, they can remember those happy, carefree times when they were children," Elkind notes. "These childhood experiences give us a storehouse of memories that we can fall back on when we're adults. But when we overwork and overpressure our kids, they don't develop that storehouse of happy memories." Children who are rushed around all the time and don't have enough time to play and rest may not even know how to relax when they become adults. "We're teaching our children to be harried and continually busy and they're not going to know how to just sit still and enjoy a quiet moment," says Dayna Prochaska, a social worker at Lincoln Prairie School in Hoffman Estates, Illinois. Prochaska also warns of the importance of one's own example: "If you lead a frenetic lifestyle because you're overwhelmed with your own work responsibilities, your kids are learn by your example what you think is important." Preserving childhood Knowing this, what's a parent to do? As a parent, you can help your child grow up at his or her own pace. Here are some suggestions for preserving childhood for your kids and keeping them from growing up too fast:
If changes need to be made in your family's lifestyle, start implementing them today for your sake and your child's. After all, "your time with your kids is really very short," Marks says, "It sounds cliché, but kids do grow up very quickly." Try to make the most of this stage of life while you can, and to ensure your kids don't grow up TOO quickly! Recommended reading Read more about godly child rearing and how to do it in today's world by requesting our free booklet . Copyright 2009 by United Church of God, an International Association All rights reserved. |
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Other Articles by Becky Sweat
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Keywords: pressure on kids kids and sex kids and violence kids and news kids and media
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