Ambitious Expectations
We’ve talked about this before here at Without Wax but I’m bringing it back because I’m still struggling with this one. Gage came home yesterday after school claiming that after 7 days of kindergarten he can now read. 
Is it just me or does it seem parents these days put more pressure on kids than ever before?
We push them to walk by age 1.
We encourage them to read by 5.
We desire they excel at a sport by age 9.
We calculate grade point averages and start talking about scholarships by 6th grade.
We want them to not only master the English language but learn a few others before they graduate.
Years ago I heard a message by Andy Stanley where he talked about how these days we’re tempted to raise kids who are experience rich but relationally poor. In other words they’ve attended every camp, played every sport, mastered most of the arts, played three instruments, but they were so busy they never had the opportunity to just sit around the kitchen table.
I’m worried that sometimes in our effort to give our kids what we didn’t have we rob them of one of the most important things we can give them…ourselves.
I read an interesting article some time ago entitled “The Growing Backlash Against Overparenting.” They said…
Since the onset of the Great Recession, according to a CBS News poll, a third of parents have cut their kids’ extracurricular activities. They downsized, downshifted and simplified because they had to — and often found, much to their surprise, that they liked it. When a TIME poll last spring asked how the recession had affected people’s relationships with their kids, nearly four times as many people said relationships had gotten better as said they’d gotten worse.
How ironic that we might actually become better parents creating a richer family with less money and fewer opportunities.
So what are your thoughts on “overparenting”?
I have friends whose kids are so busy that our kids can’t even play together. More than one set of friends, at that. It is sad to me.
I wonder if this ‘epidemic’ of over-parenting is endemic of a culture that wants to live vicariously through their children.
I could take some time here and try to expound on biblical principles of parenting but I am like most schmucks.. I am learning as I go.
So, instead, I will give a culturally significant indicator: If your family would make great material for the TV show, Wife Swap, then you may need to evaluate your priorities.
Wife Swap is an American TV show that takes two families and switches the mothers for two weeks. The first week the mothers must live by their ‘foster’ family’s way of life and the second week they get to impose some of their lifestyle on them. Typically, the families are polar opposites in philosophies and live in the extreme of whatever their particular bent is. Appearing on the show is not a good indicator that your family is well-balanced.
I agree, there is something vitally important to healthy development lost when kids are so busy they can’t even eat dinner with their families of friends families.
My parents were some of the best at NOT over-parenting. They let me make mistakes, they let me do things at my own speed while still pushing me to DO my best instead of BE the best. I used to hate when my parents would make me sit and eat dinner with them & my brother (with the TV off mind you) because I wanted to be with my friends. Now I realize just how greatly those times at dinner shaped who I am and how I lead my own family.
That balance is tough!!
I think children can get caught up in busyness just like their parents. How much more do we blog, tweet, text and facebook than we spend quality time sitting down to talk face to face with each other? Maybe we can teach them to slow down by modeling relationally rich lives ourselves.
Not a fan of overparenting. I know several families that have some type of extracurricular activity going on every night of the week, add to that mix tons of homework (is it just me, or do they have much more homework than I did?) and that leaves very little time for just hanging out as a family. That’s gotta be stressful on the kids and the parents.
As I am thinking about going for my PHD I am realizing that I should have spent more time learning French or German during high school instead of the latest punk/ska CD (the late 90′s were great for that stuff!).
I am concerned that I will overparent my kids but on the other hand I want to make sure they have the tools/experiences necessary for a full life. As with many things, I feel there is a balance we need to strike here.
All I have are theories seeing that I don’t have kids yet.
I do know that it is difficult for me to concentrate on more than a few things at a time and I wouldn’t want to pressure my children to do something that I never expect myself to do.
I hope to provide a simple life for my children on day.
Bonus for my children: they will grow up knowing two languages because I am an American living in Germany.
Nice!
are there any other fans of the ‘bigdaddy’ parenting method. kids wear whatever they want, go by frankenstein, and eat 30 packets of ketchup for breakfast. i am.
Yeah.. but the whole peeing on the side of a wall thing doesn’t work out so well for girls.
well, tony, my daughter’s still young — and wears diapers. but also you might be surprised exactly WHERE people do indeed pee where we live…
My daughter just started kindergarten. I hadn’t sent her to preschool and she didn’t know all of her letters and I was starting to feel a little guilty. But I wouldn’t trade the time I got to spend with her one on one for anything. We went to museums, I let her tote around her own small camera and showed her how to use it. We visited parks and had special “girls lunches out”. She’ll be in school a long time and have plenty of time to learn all she needs to. I’m grateful for those special days we spent together.
We can wear our kids and ourselves out running from activity to activity. Things that in the long run won’t matter a whole lot. Then we miss out on what will matter: the relationships we built with our family. Someone already said it, but I think it’s all about balance.
Heidi, my daughter was the same way with kindergarten. She didn’t know everything she was “supposed” to know upon arrival, but she survived and is doing great this year in first grade.
I think its much more important for our kids to have it drilled into them how much mommy & daddy love them, than whether or not they meet the “standards” imposed by the schools.
LOVE the story!
I’m not a parent, but I would have to say that my siblings and I didn’t do every activity possible and we turned out fine…er…mostly fine. Often we’ll reminisce about lazy summers of simply being a kid. I hope some day that my kids are able to remember times when they spent all day at the park with their siblings, or went exploring in the field behind our house, simply because they aren’t rushing off to 8 million things.
If you talked to my sibs, some of our best memories are of hanging in the kitchen- just talking, playing w/the kids in the ‘hood, or going to mickey d’s for a coke w/our parents…parking the car in the parking lot & just yakking. We didn’t do much in the way of extracurricular. And we didn’t miss it. Our kids get 1 extracurricular activity per season, and the rest of the time is much more relational. Dinner together every night, some wicked Wii tourneys, Dominoes, Monopoly (my husband would tell you that any good Asian rocks at that game!), and build your own pizza night. That’s the stuff of a good foundation. If our children love God rabidly, and live for Him with everything they’ve got – well, then we’ve been successful parents.
I invited a young man that I have been mentoring for several years now to our home for a WII- Mario Kart tourney on Saturday. We had a fantastic time because my kids and I get into the Kart game like we were trading paint on a real track. Before we got into the tourney we went for lunch at a restaurant in my hometown that is 2 hours away. I mention that because we had a couple of super squirters and a cooler of water in the van left over from a canoe trip the weekend before. While I wouldn’t necessarily suggest it, having a water fight in a van rolling down the highway will definitely be something my kids will remember when they are ‘all grown up’.
Love it, Tony! One fab memory that all 4 of us (me & my sibs) have is when my dad stealthily climbed onto the roof of our house & water-bombed us all!
“And I got eaten by him.” – Love it!
That was my favorite part too!
I knew you would catch that Lindsey.:)
This economic crisis might actually be one of the best turn of events in a family’s life!!! The kitchen table – that’s where family life is!
I HATE overparenting, and I HATE the educational expectations that the government is forcing on our young kids. Kids in kindergarten are now “learning” what we did in first and second grade. The problem is that they may learn to mimic and regurgitate, but they are not physically/mentally capable of truly understanding much of what they are doing. Seriously, Venn diagrams in kindergarten??!
Without a grasp of BASICS, these kids cannot grasp high-order thinking when they are older/more mature. And yes, there is a spritual lesson to be had there as well.
I jealously protect my family time and my the time for my kids to just run around outside. Every night, there will be a group of about 10-12 neighborhood kids in our backyard, playing wiffle ball, playing football, or even just wrapping the swingset in yarn (I have no idea why, but it was quite creative. They even went door to door, selling lemonade to buy more yarn to finish their project. They managed to take the neighbors for $17!!
)
Kids now do travel teams at 5, so by the time they get to high school they are over the whole concept of playing a team sport. They do EVERYTHING so much earlier that they get bored with it. We are producing a generation of adults who truly had no childhood, so they turn back to childhood as adults…..and that is a mess!
Yes, I do see over involved parenting, and it seems like one of those areas where “Keeping up with the Joneses” is common. I was doing it for a while and somewhere I thought “when are these kids ever going to be kids” so I began to watch myself. We have days allotted to “Doing nothing/Doing whatever we please”. Its fun and relaxing when we really hone in on the Art of doing Nothing and just Be.
Thats where I think farm kids in rural america have the advantage. Busy means riding with dad on the tractor, taking out the 4 wheeler to check the cattle, time together is a must and very much enjoyed. We don’t have time to be busy running the roads to sports events. Our kids are happy and do very well with just that. So, yeah, overparenting can really rip you off.
The busyness thing…man. If Cooper has 90 seconds with nothing to do he totally freaks out. Did we do that?
re overparenting, before Cooper was born I decided that if someone asked me how well my son was doing I’d say ‘he’s average’. With every elses kids being above average I felt like it was my civil responsibility to inboke a little regression toward the mean. (If everyone’s kids are above average, then isn’t ‘above average’…average?) But I found that I’m just like everyone else…I usually find myself talking about the areas he’s above average in.
I guess our job is to learn to nurture the strong areas as much as the weak areas without panicking if the weak areas aren’t completely catching up.
My preacher says that Parenting = Teaching and Training your kids to LEAVE!
Therefore overparenting must be over-teaching and over-training? I can’t imagine many parents that would not want to teach and train as MUCH as they can, knowing that at a certain point, little Johnny or Janice moves on to their own life.
I’ll trade experiences for things any day. And it seems kind of hard for kids to get experiences unless they are confronted with ‘different’ day in and day out.
I grew up rather poor and in a music-unfriendly house. As a junior in college I picked up a guitar and learned to play. Today, at 51, I am an OK guitar player, but what I wouldn’t give to trade some of those ‘romper room times’ in the backyard with my mom taking me to guitar lessons.
I might be playing in Keith Urbans band right now. So as for me, I think I’ll take over teaching and over training. Only in an over good way…
invoke, not imboke.
It is such a tough balance. My two teenagers have practice or a game every day after school. They are rarely home before 6pm. Having family dinner is a core value for us. We can’t do it every night. It is such a tough balance! They are great kids, they love Jesus, make good grades and help around the house and with their younger siblings. It’s still so hard to balance the sports (only one per season), homework, & family time.
It is a daily battle. But…we live on a battlefield, not a playground. As parents we must fight for the balance.
I think all the structure can be useful, and is needed, but at the same time children have wild and vivid imaginations and they should be allowed/encouraged to let that flourish.
As a parent of grown children, I can look back and see tons of mistakes I made. Sometimes, I wish I could just start over. I definitely do not agree with over parenting but under parenting is a huge problem as well. I strongly feel a child should be taught (1st and foremost) that they are responsible for their actions and have to accept the consequences for their choices. Right now I am having to give some “tough love” and it is not easy. No matter what aged parent we are, we are still learning to be parents.
I may have written this same response the last time we discussed this – but I stand by it.
Did we over-parent? Maybe. But what we tried to do was expose our daughter to as many interest areas as possible until we found those in which she naturally excelled. Just now she is beginning college as a Modern Music Worship Leader Major – and she is loving it – learning and serving in her areas of strength and giftedness. If we over-parented, I’m glad we did.
P.S. – The college isn’t too far from you Pete, it’s in Memphis, TN – Visible School and is an absolutely awesome, Kingdom-focused program. http://www.visible.edu
We knew….FOR US…that we needed to limit our daughters activities. God assured us that they would develop and prosper without DOING EVERYTHING available. We tried some simple, short term things when they were 4 and 5 to determine their interests and skills and I mean SHORT term. Then we limited their activities. Our goal was to sit down and eat dinner together at a reasonable hour more often than not each week. Our family home had to be a place of peace and refuge…filled with people who knew how to be quiet and content at times…and could get along with family. God gave those two precious girls to US to train and raise…not every coach or teacher that came along…they were part of the picture but as parents we were first. Our girls are now 25 and 21…and they have excelled in so many areas…and we LOVE to hang out together. They found peace in a relationship with God…life is not just about DOING!….it’s about BEING.
Well Pete you did it. You found the one Time Magazine article that I will ever agree with.
Callie and I are new to the world of parenting and we both love it. I fear that if we became helicopter parents we would be robbing our children the enjoyment childhood and we would be robbing ourselves the enjoyment of parenthood.
Except when it comes to rooting for North Carolina basketball that will never be tolerated in my house. They can vote Democrat, become Communists whatever but they will never be fans of the Tar Heels.
As a first time parent (my daughter is 5 months) I already have these dreams and goals I want her to do and accomplish.
This is such a good reminder to let kids be kids sometimes, and let them go at their own pace. It’s so hard even at this age to not compare them to other kids their age and wonder if they are on the right track, are they sitting up like other kids their age are, are they eating solids yet like other kids are? The list goes on and on.
But, I think it’s important to remember that every kids and every set of parents are different. I don’t want to over parent, I just want to find what works best for us and let our children go at their own pace.
We have made a conscious choice as parents to not have our kids involved in every activity there is out there. We have put a high premium on spending time together. Instead of paying money for our kids to do every activity we have chosen to save that money and use it for a family vacation every year.
While our culture values extracurricular activities, we have to realize with that thinking comes “the more the better”. If we’re not discerning as parents, before we know it we’ve set up “activity” as somewhere in-between a habit and an idol in our kids’ hearts and minds. It’s so much better to invest in time and communication (relationship) with them instead.
I was just venting about this the other day on facebook. I’m not a parent yet (hoping and praying for that to happen, but thats another story).
I grew up not rich, we lived paycheck to paycheck and moved a lot, but I remember how we played with linkin logs and different things and used our imaginations and made stories and had fun being a family. I don’t think it is necessary to have a different activity every night for kids. i mean use them for rewards or something, or wait until the kids are a little older so they can choose something they want to do. I think these days people are putting kids into a ton of classes or “structured” play time, and not letting the kids learn things on their own or discover things. I remember going on scavenger hunts and learning in FUN ways about things. Make time for friends and fellowship, make that a priority. I have “friends” here in nashville, but they don’t have time to be a friend, they are too busy with their kids schedule and whatever else.
I think that to be happy you need to be a friend in Christ and have/give the time you need to family and friends….because you don’t know how much you can learn or your kids can learn from your friends, or how much a small visit can mean to someone, but not having time for that is hard on everyone. “cause you can’t miss class or you might get behind” what about getting behind in being social, and getting behind in your time for ministering?
sorry i’m rambling and on a soap box here. I’ll bow out now.
I am the chaplain at an all boys private elementary school in Memphis, TN. I see this every single day. Here is one extreme example. In a first grade parent meeting over their son’s bad grade, the mom made this comment: “well how is he going to get into Harvard with a grade like that.” Yes, it is a true story. We battle every day with parents excessively pushing their kids. It is a tough battle considering we live in a culture that promotes early success. I pray that God will stir a movement in parents to disciple their kids and model grace and mercy to them in how they live out the gospel on a daily basis. We teach our boys a manhood definition that gives them a framework to navigate the next few years of their life. A real man glorifies God by seeking an adventuresome life of purpose and passion as he protects and serves others. It helps our parents raise their sons with a godly vision of manhood and how that fleshes out in their life.
I get flack from friends and family, because my kids are not involved in every single activity or sport that comes along. I got flack for not putting any of my kids in pre-school. I got flack because one of them could not (would not) read or write by kindergarten. So, yes, I do think parents push their kids too hard and over-schedule them. A lot of kids out there are going to be book smart, but street stupid.
UGH, that last line sounds so offensive. I’m sorry. If I could edit, I would.
I don’t find anything at all offensive and I totally agree. I think that most would agree with you. So many Kids these days are clueless about real life. They don’t just ‘know’ stuff. Heck, they don’t have to! They can find the answers to anything they want to know by doing a Google Search on their cell phones.
Good for you sticking to your guns. The kids will “catch up.”
I agree that the epidemic of “over-parenting” is getting out of hand… kids are detached, distant, and overwhelmed.
As a mother, I cringe when I see other mothers (my peers) stress over their parenting… they forget to breathe, and not only do their kids suffer… but then they suffer from never living up to their own expectations as parents.
Great post.
I grew up in a family that was always on the go. Not only in activities but we moved constantly. I’m 24 and have moved 10 times. Our rule every time we changed schools was we had to be involved in at least 1 sport and 1 club activity to meet other kids. My brother and I are two very different people. I’ll talk to a wall if I have to, where he was always more introverted and ended up meeting friends through my friends’ older siblings more often than not. This first rule kept us busy but we had 2 rules we kept up. No matter what, we always sat around the dinner table at the end of the day. Sometimes that meant one of us kids ate earlier but when the other came home we would all sit and enjoy time together while the other was eating. Some of my favorite memories don’t come from the drama club, the choruses I was in or the swim team; they come from laughing with my brother and parents around that table. Of course the sports and clubs were great, and I loved my time in school but the love I have for those around me (friends and family) stems from those times spent laughing, crying, and sharing with my parents and brother. I think it’s fair to say both are important but it’s the time we spend together that matters most.
I feel like if we are not overparenting our kids we are out of the norm. My close friend and I have a pact that we will keep each other accountable when it comes to overscheduling our kids. It is like peer pressure all over again “what are your kids signed up for?” or “your not doing travel soccer?” etc. It is amazing how we will spend time scheduling every activity under the sun for our kids but not give the same thought/time to their spiritual development. It is a big balancing act for sure but I am grateful to have a husband and good friends to help us along the way.
It’s one of the many reasons our family has chosen to homeschool over the years. We’re on our own schedule with no outside pressures. It’s been a blessing for our children to truly have the luxury of a childhood. We do like our kids to experience new things but certainly don’t pressure them in any way. I feel sad for the preschoolers I see being pressured to join every play group, go to preschool every day and/or play every sport. Sometimes all they want is to crawl up on their mommmies lap and be read to and then take a nap.
meant “mommies”
It is an epedimic. As a blended family it is even harder to find that chill time together. Monday night dinner is so specialto us. This is the one night per week we are all 5 together. We have dinner around the table as often as we can. The kids love this time. It is a time we all can talk about what is going on. The conversations are hysterical. We opted to cut out several activities that took away from this hour.each child can participate in one Extra activity.This was modeled to me when I was young by my parents. My kids may not be the best well rounded can do it all kids but they know they are loved. I think that will help them go far:)
My goal is this to raise kids that love God, love thier fellow man, and occasionally want to return home to vist me and thier dad. Everything else is just gravy.
Now, keeping that in perspective is sometimes the hard part, but at least I have a defined goal
With four children less than seven years apart, we couldn’t afford to overparent – and I’m grateful. I’ll gladly take simplicity and relationships over frantic busyness any day.
I take what I thought was the Lazy Mom’s Strategy…but now I’ll rebrand it as not overparenting
…
Sports? Husband & I stink at them, so the kids will too. Maybe running?
Music? Ditto.
Preschool? Too expensive and too much effort.
I know there is a balance, but right now (they are 3 & 5) I just want to keep the busyness away from them. They are busy enough with friends, some daycare, and church activities. Oh, and a whole lot of Legos, bikes, and building forts in the yard. That stuff is hard work!
I’ve caught some grief over not sending my just-turned-5 year old to Kindergarten this year. It’s an all day program here, and he *just* stopped taking a nap. He’s not ready. I’ve been asked more than once, “He’s not going? What is wrong with him?”
I try to explain briefly, but people are really baffled.
I don’t know if anyone does “overparenting” better than Asian parents, whether or not they’re still in Asia.
As a child, I had piano lessons, ballet lessons, tennis lessons, swimming lessons. Except for ballet, which I actively asked for, they were all by my mother’s decree. I was going for swimming classes for years after I’d learnt all of the popular strokes. It wasn’t that I was training or competing. I still don’t understand why I was in swimming class for so long.
These classes were in addition to school and the related extracurricular activities (like compulsory athletic practice and the Scouts), and additional academic coaching that practically every upper-middle-class Malaysian kid “needed” to go to in order to keep up at school.
This year I’ve done a lot of introspection and come to the conclusion that I didn’t have a childhood. Not only because of all the stuff my parents kept me busy with, but also because I was always expected to behave like a little adult.
My parents were trying to give us what they’d never had growing up during the war, but I kind of wish they had given up some of the activity in favour of being emotionally present with us.
So many opportunities to really learn and be enriched were lost because of classes we had to attend or homework that needed to be done. And all of my formal learning from childhood can probably be reduced to about 4-5 years’ worth of full-time schooling; everything else I know that is worth knowing, I got from reading non-curricular books.
I pray that by the time I meet the right guy and we have children, there’s going to be a lot more balance in our family.
It is crazy the kind of money required to “play” at a sport that most kids can’t even pronounce when they start playing. We began to become over scheduled when they all got older I have band kids and I serve as the band secretary so we are pretty busy all the time. My siblings however decided that they would schedule their kids for one activity at a time. If they want to play soccer, then they just do soccer…one of my sisters has 3 boys and a total of 7 games or more a week, I think that is even too much… but because they cut out swimming and karate from their lives… her boys have quit crying. LOL
Here’s one experience we had: When our two kids were about 3 and 5, I took a job on California’s Central Coast. We’d barely gotten there when our TV wore out. My wife felt God didn’t want us to replace it. So, instead, she gave the kids her time. They read books together, listened to tapes, played games, did crafts, and even built furniture.
I worked 12-hour days, and didn’t see any of them much from Monday through Friday, so we took a few hours every Saturday or Sunday afternoon and just went for a family walk out in the country. To learn what were seeing, we visited the library. We learned about Spanish land grants, ranchos, missions, plants, animals, rocks, and even barbecues. We started collecting agates, jaspers, and quartz crystals, and made simple jewelry.
By the time we got a TV again, the years of “togetherness” had formed our kids’ characters – and done it well.
As a teacher I see yawning children before me every day. Their schedules are so full and tight they lack the energy to focus in class.
I also see children who only see their computer screen when they are at home They yawn too, by the way …
It’s a balance you need to keep. A child needs some activities besides school, and sports are good! But allow your child some “together with mom and dad time” too! That’s what they will remember best!!
16 years of corporate training exposed me to a LOT of echo-boomers (children of baby boomer parents who were highly overprogrammed)… they tended to want to stay busy… busy… busy, but always needed someone to tell them what to do next (not a ton of initiative).
Kids need to rest. They need time to reflect… time with family, time just “being” – we are human beings, not human doings… but we have created a generation of kids who don’t understand how to be.
There are some great books on this topic, and the compounding factors. One, which I am reading now, Unconditional Parenting talks a lot about the pressures on children and what it looks like to truly love our children without conditions, and I have found that it fits well with Tim Kimmel’s books, especially Grace Based Parenting, The High Cost of High Control, and Raising Kids for True Greatness.
First there is no ideal parent or method. My oldest is now in college but I still have two early teens in the house. One of my cousins has always kept their kids very active and busy. I on the other hand have put more emphasis on encouraging interests and occasionally pushing to interact with other people.
My cousins children seem very well balanced and socialized children and mine do as well. I will note that on occasion that I have heard the spouse and the children voice complains on the scheduling issue and pushing to do. They often just want to “be”.
My children tend to just want to “be” and I have to push them more to be relational. They are often tempted to just be near a TV or other media source. If I don’t push, they might just let life pass them by.
I don’t think either is “best”. It is a balancing act. Ultimately God is the designer we are just there to be shepherds to these children. We have to make sure we are following Christ. If we are living in the Spirit and not the wiles of the word, things will be clearer. We have to be more focused on the spiritual development of the children not on the skills and trophies. Those are just bandages on wounds and junk food. They need spiritual nutrition.