Parenting in the morning...

[elfs]

Mark Oppenheimer worries about helicopter parenting:

I think these kinds of parents are striving to rule out eccentricity. Nobody, after all, is striving to engineer a lovable nerd, or a spacey dreamer, or an obsessive collector.

I dunno, I would much perfer a spacey dreamer or loveable nerd to the prototypical narrow-niched ordinary "teenagers" that seem to haunt the middle and high schools in my district.

Oppenheimer makes a claim that "over-controlling parents are just acting out their own best hunches, or, more likely, their own failed fantasies." If that's so then Storm is living out mine: she's actually popular, something neither Omaha or I ever acheived. And yet what we adults are aware of, more than anything else, is that her happiness is still relative, difficult, and worth thinking about.

Comments

[moiety-tx.livejournal.com]

Not that I can tell much from my 2-year-old, but I'm rather hoping for a lovable nerd myself.

[hydrolagus.livejournal.com]

I think his statement, even in context, is unclear. Is he using nobody concretely or sardonically? If I were more familiar with his writing style I could probably tell for sure, but I think sardonically.
A distinction should be made between attentive and involved, and over-controlling. Storm may be living out your fantasy of being popular, but I bet her ability to do so comes from the environment of self-awareness, responsibility and love that you and Omaha provide. You're not there making sure she has play-dates with the "right" kids and steering her away from the misfits.

[sirfox.livejournal.com]

I think that every generation of parents finds new and trendy ways to screw up their kids. Just a hundred years ago, it was considered good parenting to bring your children to public executions.

People alive today lived through the tradition of handing off children to a wetnurse to be raised for the first several years of their lives, only to be brought back into the houses of complete strangers who tell them that they are their real parents.

Not all that long ago, thousands of kids a year died from overdoses of opiates in 'children's elixers' given them by parents to 'help them sleep.'

Through it all, though, we still got more or less functional adults. The overachieving nutter helicopter types are noticeable, but probably a temporary and trendy minority. I think kids with the nature for being spacy, or geeks, or jocks, or artists, will likely head that way regardless of the nurture they get. Effectively pairing the two may better set them up for success, and a few might be hammered down lives totally contrary to what is in their heart, not really any different from what's always happened.

You sound like you're doing a great job, i was happy to read about the discussion of the tribemind idea the other day. keep at it.

[shunra.livejournal.com]

That makes an invalid assumption: that overcontrolling parents will actually get the results they want in the children they raise.

I've never seen that happen, over the long run, and very seldom seen it happen over the short run, either - kids tend to object to being micromanage. The blowback tends to be impressive.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_candide_/]

Worse: the overcontrolling parents are trying to engineer children rather than raise children. Let alone raise adults. (As in: raise your children to be adults. Just wanted to clarify in case anyone out there misreads. *wink*)

The "blowback" of which you speak comes from not teaching them responsibility during the first 11-13 years. I once said to a woman in a position of some authority, "Well, children have to be taught the values their parents want to instill in them from day-1. They won't absorb Responsibility out of the air via osmosis, y'know."

The conversation was about making teenagers shoulder some of the responsibility of adulthood early, to ease them into it. As the conversation progressed, it became clear that she her views were not about teenagers in general, but that she was talking about her own out-of-control teenager. The idea that you have to teach your kids responsibility before they become adults had never occurred to her.