cool yet disturbing article

[permetaform]

via tochira

A Nation of Wimps

By: Hara Estroff Marano
Summary: Parents are going to ludicrous lengths to take the bumps out of life for their children. However, parental hyperconcern has the net effect of making kids more fragile; that may be why they're breaking down in record numbers.


...Causes me to both bless and curse my parents on the same breath. They're not as bad as some of those mentioned, but, god. (ask lierdumoa sometime for the story sometime when my mother called her to hunt me down. she found her number via my phone bill. ::headdesk::)

On the one hand, I wonder how I survived. On the other, I take an honest look at myself, and wonder if I truly did.

Also:
"In an era of rampant grade inflation, some college students find it shocking to discover there are 26 letters in the alphabet"

le sigh.

Comments

[jackfan2.livejournal.com]

Yea. I can honestly, as a parent of two boys, see that happening.

Our kids have friends whose parents give them everything. My thirteen year old, best example, his friends have iPods (over $300), three gaming systems (XBox,PS2 & GameCube), swimming pools in their back yards, if they rip and tear up their clothes, their parents don't care. Off they go to the clothing store without a blink to replace them.

We, on the other hand, refuse the iPods, opting for the cheaper RCA mp3 player, ONE game system and after we purchased the first five games for Christmas the boys have to use their own money to purchase more. Also, we don't buy ANY games new, all are used from GameStop. Our oldest, when it was time to buy a computer for him, went with my husband to the Fry's (greatest computer store on the planet) and they bought the ingredients to BUILD him a computer. That task he had to help his father with and learn how it was done.

I wonder if it has something to do with the smaller family unit these days. When I was born in '63 (yes, I'm 41), my parents had 6 kids. There was far too much going on all the time to be spoiled. My Dad was in Viet Nam most of the time, so we all had to pitch in in our military family and work together. Not that there weren't millions of fights along the way, mind you. But we just knew how to band together and focus on what was important, not on what we had.

Now a-days, couples are having one or two kids and it seems they're pinning all their hopes and dreams on the success of that one or two kids. That kind of pressure or non-pressure just isn't healthy. They don't learn to share, they don't learn to not have things, they don't learn communication when sequestered in their room with all their stuff. Parents become detached parents, and that doesn't teach them how to become better parents, nor does it teach their kids how to deal.

There were 6 kids in my family and if one didn't work out, maybe the next one would do better... LOL.. just kidding. Seriously, though, there wasn't all this .... STUFF and the desire to have MORE stuff...

Recently, I lost my job. My husband's job is precarious, at best so we might find a whole new meaning for the word 'tough', and moving might be our only survival option. Our oldest, with his close friends, will suffer most, but he'll learn that life doesn't always give you the stuff you want, though I think we've been teaching him that, and stuff is less important than the family that supports, understands, and molds you into the human being that you need to be to suffer lifes disappointments when it's all up to you to survive.

Good luck and remember all this as you have your kids. We might be moving back to my little home town where all my sisters and their kids live, so life will do a major upheaval fairly soon, but who says that it won't be for the better.

Remember this: sometimes life knocks you on your back so that the only place you have to look is up. Seems we've lost our ability to live a life of meager existance. Time to get back to basics and remember, 'Less is more'.