We were at a restaurant, waiting to be seated.
The hostess seated a group of people, which opened some spaces on the booth at the entrance waiting area. A couple immediately claimed the seats for their two children, even though there were elderly people left standing.
Later, another couple came in. A seat a little further away was open, and they spent five minutes coaxing their young daughter to sit there while they waited for a table, even though she seemed perfectly content, even seemed to prefer, to stand with her parents.
What I want to know is
Am I the only one who thinks this is strange??
Since when do children, who don’t even like to sit very long, have first dibs on a seat, even over elderly people? Kids have enough energy and stamina to ride bikes all afternoon or jump on the trampoline for hours, but they can’t stand for 10 minutes?
We have such weird ideas about children in this country. We coddle them and dumb everything down, from insisting on a crappy children’s menu for our little darlings (that is full of fried, mono-colored food) to slathering everything they “own” with cartoon characters.
Oh, but that means we love children, right? Our culture is just embracing childhood, right? Hm.
Then why don’t we want them around? Instead of truly including them in our lives, we fill their time with activities and events separate from us. Pretty much everything a family could do together, from learning anything to our time at church, we reflexively follow a pattern in which we are disconnected and disengaged. Oh, we call it something happy and cheery sounding so that we can feel like we’re doing a really great thing for them, but really, we just want a break. Throw in some bright colors and annoying music, and wow, now we’ve really soothed our conscience. Because doggone it, look at how much we cherish our children.
It’s as if we think that for children to have fun, they need to be doing something mindless. Think about it. When they’re babies, they absolutely love “helping”. Give them a broom or a damp rag, and they’re entertained. Children absolutely thrill at the opportunity to follow mommy and daddy, copying everything they do. Heck, kids even love playing with a cardboard box.
The ironic thing is, even before children are interested, the majority of parents already begin to make the world of thoughtless foolishness mandatory by pushing their children away so they can “get something done” and, in the hopes of holding their children’s attention span longer, filling their day with plastic junk.
I remember the first time I lay my first child under one of those infant play centers. It played music and flashed colored lights, supposedly to keep my baby entertained. I lay him down, placed it over him and turned it on. He stared at it with huge eyes for a few seconds, then promptly began screaming. Sensory overload, much?
People who travel to other countries come to realize how odd it really is here. Take Sweden, for example. They don’t have state of the art playgrounds and most of the schoolyards don’t even have a fence. But they acknowledge the need for open play. That’s imaginative, child-led play. They embrace the inherent ways children learn and grow, and seek to nurture that in the way they educate and plan a child’s day.
It’s a crazy concept for us here, where children begin organized sports at three years old and where we wouldn’t think of allowing Precious to play without rubber mulch to cushion her fall. An elementary school teacher recently told me her students only have half an hour recess. Per week. Indoors. It’s heartbreaking!
I read with interest a recent parenting article that suggested moms could make Spring Break spent at home an opportunity to teach their children life skills. Things like sorting laundry, loading the dishwasher, and gardening were cited as excellent ways to bond while learning something beneficial. I completely agree, but find it sad that such an idea is considered innovative. More disheartening are the comments that follow such a recommendation, as parents lament the fact that their kids “would never” participate in such activities, or would complain the entire time.
Really? May I just suggest we are raising a generation of brats?
And then there’s all the stuff. Just looking at the crap toys we have for children can drive a parent mad. I was reminded of the tragedy that is our country’s toy stores when I recently tried finding a couple big trucks that didn’t make noise and a doll stroller that was a normal color. (As in, not fluorescent pink.) I walked out of the store empty-handed. The aisles are loaded with television character action figures, Disney junk and video games. Anything that requires imagination, or is made from a natural material, or at least isn’t colored a sickly color, is lost on a back shelf or nonexistent. Thank goodness for online shopping, the saving grace of weird parents.
Bottom line - I am bewildered by the general parenting trends. On one hand we expect ridiculously too much from our children. We eventually view the erroneous conclusions of a horrid misunderstanding of children’s needs as normal, even necessary. Things like eight hour school days for young children, majority of time spent indoors, more intense “education” and “socialization” at an increasingly younger age, and pushing infants to function independently.
On the other hand we then mollycoddle them, even despite our better judgment, in a misguided effort to make them “happy”. Flavored milk and endless snacks devoid of nutrition , way too much television and video games, and minimal chores are par for the course.
Hey, I’m the last to claim I have this parenting gig figured out. Maybe I’m way off. Could it be I’m making a grave mistake by expecting my children to be more than consumers?
Maybe it’d be better to baby them endlessly by waiting on them hand and foot and fulfilling their every whim, turning them into such whiny brats that we ship them off every chance we get just to get a little peace and quiet.
You can tell it’s working quite well by the vast numbers of thankful, appreciative teenagers it’s producing.
Tags: children, family, idiocy, parenting
