Protecting Kids to Death: Safe Child Syndrome

[Lydia Leftcoast]

At the park the other day, I happened to glance up just as a dad and daughter walked past clutching walkie-talkies. Not the toy kind, but grownup walkie-talkies so neatly engineered that the child's fit cozily in her palm. The girl, who appeared to be about six, was dressed in a red twin set with oversized cat's-head buttons and her blond hair was drawn into a red scrunchy. Her dad wore a pinched expression and a suede baseball cap.
(snip)

Behold the most controlling, anxiety-ridden, over-involved generation of parents ever.

After the walkie-talkie episode, I took an informal poll of parents I know. At what age or stage of development can Mom or Dad go ahead and sit down, reasonably assured their little darlings will survive a solo whirl on the jungle gym? Instead of a hard-and-fast answer, what I got was the sense that we hover for numerous and complicated reasons. We fear school buses, babysitters, and sometimes even Grandma and Grandpa, who may not know any better than to let the baby cry a little on her way to sleep. We're scared adversity will scar our kids or, conversely, that they'll be bored--a condition that, left untreated, might turn them into school shooters.

But we also fear their independence. We're up there in the climber because we can't afford to miss a minute of face time, you see. We believe our physical presence is the linchpin to the children's emotional well-being and, although we never say so out loud, we want it that way--because it's central to our well-being. We're scared the kids will grow up to resent the fact that Mommy works, or--the biggest golem on the list--they just plain won't like us. And in an age of high divorce rates and transient communities, kids who don't like us suggest the possibility that we might really end up alone.


http://www.citypages.com/databank/26/1267/article13058.asp

[havocmom]

1. The worst thing I see, and I see it constantly, is parents who don't make

'no' mean no. If they tell a kid 'no' at all, they always give in and most kids have this figured out by 18 months. Parents afraid to be disliked? Probably the root cause. Too many wee ones ruling the roost.

So kids grow up thinking they are in charge, which makes them insecure and sets them up for trouble when they get to school. Teachers end up with a room full of little ego maniacs who have no frame of reference for dealing with disappointment, no self calming skills, and no respect for anyone.

I love children and it breaks my heart that most people do not parent yet hover and suffocate thinking that is their job. Kids don't mature and grow well without decent parenting. Toys and gadgets do not make up for thought and patience.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

2. Perhaps the public will profit from Super Nanny

who at least teaches parents how to make "no" mean "no."

The hovering of the type described in this article is annoying, though. I'm so glad I was a child in the 1950s, when parents didn't think it was their job to micromanage us. We'd spend our weekends running around the neighborhood from one backyard to another.

Yeah, yeah, I know that these are supposed to be "dangerous times" with pedophiles and kidnappers behind every tree. Maybe today's parents don't know that there were pedophiles and kidnappers in the 1950s, too. The parents in those days seemed to have a better instinctive understanding of the odds and didn't have CNN screaming 24/7 about every abduction that occurs anywhere in the U.S.

[havocmom]

3. We share similar experiences with time and culture, I see.

I am also worried about the perception of reality kids are developing now. Seems with all the hovering they will have the world divided into two camps, those out to get them and those who have only their protection to deal with. That gives them a wholly unrealistic view of others and also reinforces the notion that everything revolves around them.

One parent I know, doing pretty well at learning 'on the job' with his first son, made this remarkable observation when his rather reckless, rambunctious son was about 18 months old: "The job is not so much racing around preventing them from getting hurt as it is just doing 'damage control'. They are gonna fall sometimes, you just can't be everywhere. Maybe that's good. How else are they gonna learn to deal with gravity? And I guess as they grow, they are gonna fall from higher places. My job is to let him fall in the way lest damaging to his well being."

He sighed and agreed that the real pain for a decent parent was knowing some of the pitfalls ahead but understanding not all can be taught. It hurts when your kid bumps his knee or his heart, but you have to let them experience life while trying to keep the damage under control.

Wow, he summed it up so well.

[PATRICK]

4. Seems like trendy reporting of an age old phenomenon.

More than anything "new". Maybe it is seeing this type of reporting for so many years that I see the same "new" trends rediscovered with barely a difference in makeup.

Parents trying too hard. Parents trying to control. The breakdown in relationships and social skills. Mostly things go wrong when a society or unit introverts itself into a tizzy and clings to any raft or far or emotional state that ironically and naturally makes the situation worse or far worse by unintended consequences.

You could do more good for yourselves and your kids by being yourselves and working for a society that doesn't kill them or their future, much less damn offspring by mercury polluters to a lifetime of autism and learning disabilities. There is hovering over the nest and hovering in the skies. Keep hovering over the nest and everyone starves to death.

I wonder how many successful hoverers ever had their kid turn the other way in the school hall instead of rushing over for a hug or saying "yeah, that's Dad over there" to their friends. Befuddled, upset or amused? The illusion of reinventing the wheel and being a "better" parent contains a subtle trap.

[havocmom]

5. The result of not letting a kid learn that no means no and they are not

the center of the universe: more and more incidents like this happening
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x1323032
because kids are not taught/allowed to learn to deal with disappointment in appropriate manners and teachers have had it with kids who have not been taught how to behave.

We have a family of teens in our town who are behaving VERY badly (public sexual antics at school) and yet the mom won't accept that there is a problem. She is a smothering hover-er to the point that she interjects herself into school assemblies. I really think the kids are trying to get expelled cuz they wanna escape from her. They keep getting more outrageous all the time (I am no prude, but think teens should know how to behave and not beat off in class). The kids are mad as hell and mom doesn't see a problem.

[PATRICK]

7. Single Mom? Single child home?

Some situations seem ripe for problems because the focus is naturally affected. Which doesn't mean "bad" or "always".

[LeftyMom]

6. The article is awful

Some parents are neurotic and overprotective. It used to be veteran parents just rolled thier eyes at the first timers and reminded them that thier kids were sturdier than they thought.

The same anxious behavior now gets laid at the feet of Dr Sears (Has the author read his books? I have, I follow many of the methods he advocates and I'm a fairly laid back parent.) She badly misunderstands the work of Dr and Mrs Sears. The emphasis is on near constant contact with the mother *in infancy* so that the child is emotionally secure enough to venture out into the larger world in childhood and adulthood.


Thankfully, the author reveals that she's an idiot.

<snip> A couple of weeks ago I read in the Wall Street Journal that Minnesota is one of several states that is considering mandating full-sized car seats for kids until they are eight. Seems car seat manufacturers have discovered that older kids are more demanding and image-conscious and want seats with cool fabrics and fancy drink holders.

I e-mailed the story to a friend who keeps abreast of car seat ratings, along with the comment that I wondered what kind of lucrative new market this might mean for the manufacturers. Her one-word reply: "Cynic."

She's right, of course. But I am, too. Over the course of my kids' lives I've bought eight different car seats, all but two of them costing well over $100 apiece. Wouldn't it do more for our collective safety to ban the Chevy Avalanche and at least pretend to enforce traffic laws? <snip>

Car accidents are the most common cause of death for children over the age of one. Seatbelts are made to fit adults and do not adequately harness children. Of course children too small to fit in a car's seat belts properly should be in harnessed seats or boosters (which lift the child so that the car's lap/shoulder belt will fit,) even though (the horror!) they cost money and someone will derive a profit from selling them.

There's a point to be made here (I could say a lot about how the media drives parents to fear unlikely dangers like stranger abduction and school shootings instead of real ones like car accidents) but she misses the mark entirely by setting up the straw man of the homescholing attatchment parent who can't let thier child out of sight for a moment and then knocking it down. *yawn*