Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
Well, this is pretty much why I'm gritting my teeth and giving up the
dreamiest educational situation for my son that any mother could hope
for, with the best, most experienced, knowledgeable, sensible,
empathetic teachers and aides it has ever been my privilege to work
with, and transferring him to a rural school where he will be more or
less warehoused in a kindly but understaffed and undertrained way,
without much in the way of speech or occupational therapy, let alone
inclusion.

Shoot me now.

Meanwhile, I finally had to throw in the towel and pull my bullied and
increasingly school-phobic teenager out of the system.  I can't afford
the time, energy, and money it would take to sue the district, which
is pretty clearly what I'd have to do to get them to pay for the
nearest workable private alternative.  I can't afford to pay for it
myself, either.  What I do have is the education and experience in
academia to homeschool, so we're taking that as the path of least
resistance, which also frees us up to let her spend a lot of time at
Grandma's, too.  (It also helps that Grandma is a retired special ed
teacher.)
  

    
i've observed an interesting reversion in the class issues, in my lifetime:
when i was a kid, it seemed to me that it was the immigrant/nouveau/middle-
class-and-lower kids who were kept on a short leash (particularly the girls)
and overprotected. the upper-class kids i observed to me were given  (what
seemed to me) enviable amounts of freedom (sailing a boat by themselves for
hours); parents thought nothing of letting them trek around europe by
themselves in highschool;  etc etc. and the parents didnt seem nearly as
invasive. they, to me, had an admireable ethic of 'if you skin your knees,
keep playing. you'll be fine...'

in general, it seemed these rich kids came from families where -because- of
the privelege they had, and the entitled sense of mastery, and the sense
that the world was a benign place (because for them, it was) --- had the
expectation they could cope with whatever, deal with adults in ways that
would work for them, handle whatever came up.

i am of course overgeneralizing, and there were many exceptions.

and oh, the woman who became smith college's 1st female president did get
her phd in history and of course, didnt stay on the ranch. but she did feel
it prepared her well for her leaving rural australia, and making her way to
the u.s. where there were more possibilities for her professionally --- and
on.

and to dump all these notions into one anecdote, i remember when i was
growing up, the most -expensive- summer camp, the most exclusive, the one we
-all- wanted to attend --- was one that was a real working farm/ranch. and
you got to actually -do- stuff that mattered (albeit in a beautiful setting,
with lots of time for swimming, art, whatever).
  

    
The draining away of intellectual capital happens within as well as
across national boundaries.  Our move to a more urban and upper middle
class area was driven by the lack of a sufficient--and sufficiently
educated--population, with accompanying employment opportunities and
consequent tax base, to support a strong and diversified school system,
let alone culture.  My kids can't get what they need physically
without compromising their education and socialization.    
  

    
There is an organization called KaBoom! that is a non-profit advocate for
play <http://kaboom.org>  The goal is to have a playground/park within
walking distance of every child in America.


<loris> brings up something I was thinking about with regards to my own
family.  My mother's parents were poor when they were children, and only
became middle class when my mother was a teenager.  Grandma did everything
for her kids in the way her parents were not able to do for her.  Looking at
Mom and Grandma today, I'm thinking that Mom is a Wimpy Kid due to Grandma
being a helicopter Mom.

Dad, on the other had, came from greater means, and was expected to be
competent and independent, and he was/is.
  

    
Plenty of upper-class kids still run completely wild.  If you're not
of a mind to be much of a parent and you're affluent or wealthy, you
can basically give the kids money to go get lost.  The place I live in
ranges from working poor to affluent, and I see that all the time. 
This is not, at least in my opinion, healthy autonomy.  These people
are raising the rich heedless jerks of tomorrow.
  

    
Paulina, what you've described about the rich kids is true. There's
been a complete reversal. They were the ones on the longest (if any)
leash once. I know someone who was many times left to be raised by her
family's butler and maid. (It didn't do wonders for her sense of self
and feelings of being loved.) But the world changed, and now those
families recognize that they have the most to lose, and they are pretty
vigilant about their kids and their kids growing up to be good
stewards of all the family resources. They can be relentless in gaming
the system——calling the college president at 2 am to get their kid's
grade changed——because they know exactly how the system works. I've
addressed several groups of them, including one in Aspen, Colorado.
Just about the only difference I could see were Fendi furs and Chanel
bags at the brunch tables. Their kids now have to apply to Harvard just
like everybody else, lack the same coping skills, and eating disorders
are no less dangerous in their daughters than in anyone else's. 

The amazing experience is encountering people, mainly men, who have
parented two generations of children...one set when they were young and
then another set after divorcing and much later marrying a much
younger wife, often the age of their first set of kids. They themselves
can see, are living proof of, and sometimes articulate for me the
generational difference in childrearing. Invariably, their first set of
kids had a relaxed childhood with healthy doses of independence. And
they, or their wives, are hovering over the second set (and sometimes
they fight over this). But they get drawn into the cultural sea change
too, because the definition of the good parent has changed, and today
it includes much more vigilance and getting much more of your own
meaning from the achievements of your kids.  
  

    
One thing I'd like to make clear. I'm very confident in talking about
these phenomena among urban and suburban youth, middle class and above.
Not just in America. But all over the world, at least all over the
western industrialized world, which in many ways faces the same
problems of economic competitiveness we do. This problem exists in many
countries now, from Brazil to the Netherlands, to Sweden to Israel,
although for several reasons, it is much more intense here in the U.S.
But what I am less confident about is speaking of what is going on in
very rural communities here. My sense is the problems of overprotection
are not quite as intense there, and the kids still retain some
freedoms because the landscape still dominates
  

    
Most of the kids retain freedoms not only from overprotection but the
education and opportunities that would best prepare them to become
fuelers of national culture. 
  

    
The level of executive function skills required to fuel current
culture appears to be progressing geometrically.  Most of the middle
class families I know require two incomes to maintain their
socioeconomic status.  When parents get home, dinner must be prepared
and consumed, kids must be flogged through hours of homework (way more
than we were expected to produce when we were young) and chores, and
pretty soon it's time for bed.

Children get less exercise in school and less time to play at home in
part because there's so much work to be done, and it rarely involves
walking to the barn and milking cows.  The kids who are milking have
less time to run around loose or bury their noses in books or computers
for fun.  Even rural schools have to stick to the curriculum, which is
now structured around the need to produce ever-higher test scores.    
  

    
I just came back from a jaunt on this gorgeous and warm September
Sunday, a stroll by the harbor and around the neighborhood and back
home. And lo and behold! on my way back I couldn't help noticing
something I haven't seen in ages...six local early-teen boys playing in
the street and on the expansive plaza of a building down the block. I
wanted to cheer. 

They were perfecting maneuvers on their skateboards, taking risks,
going down steps, and generally enjoying themselves. This is a rather
upscale neighborhood and, even though it is NYC, and Brooklyn no less,
traffic on my street is almost nonexistent on a lazy Sunday——a perfect
invitation, you'd think, for all kinds of street action. Yet this is
the first time in eons(maybe more than a year) that I've seen kids
playing out there without an adult in sight. Go, kids!!!
  

    
I can't help but wonder what a rise in the number of fearful people means
for politics and governance. Does it explain the strange silence in the face
of the last decade's blatant violations of human and constitutional rights?
  

    
I do worry precisely ablout the same things you do. These kids are
overly compliant, because they've been on a track since infancy and
have never experienced the possibility of opting out; there's always an
adult to greet them at the next stop in the relay of activities. The
complaince is keeping many college classrooms silent, even in those
courses (philosophy, ethics, comparative religion) where you might
expect discussion. The kids are also not risk-takers, prefer certainty,
want all their materials laid out for them intellectually. This does
not bode well for the future of democracy or an economy that needs bold
innovators. 

I don't think it explains the strange silence of last decade because
this really didn't begin emerging (or become in any way noticeable)
until the mid-late 90s among college kid. They were the leading edge of
what has continued and intensified.

The shifts in technology really did consume a lot of energy of these
kids at first. Maybe that helps explain the silence.

These kids are generally not protecting very much; there's much more
compliance with the adult perspective.
  

    
The silence of the last decade is from the adults, not the kids. American
government seems to have been adult-deficient lately.
  

    
Heh, yeah, when I first read the title of this book, I was
half-expecting a subtitle more along the lines of How Shrub Became a
Two-Term President.

Then I discovered the wimps in question were my kids.
  

    
One dramatic change I've seen in my lifetime is the pervasive evidence
of the high costs of failure.  There weren't any panhandlers in my
hometown, until it sprouted a crop of hippies.  I was an adult by the
time they were replaced by folks who truly had nowhere else to go. 
Until then, it hadn't occurred to me this form of suffering might
befall me, if I didn't scramble to keep my head about water.  I had the
starry-eyed notion I was voting and paying taxes for, among other
things, community protection from such a fate.
  

    
Yes, "wimps" has its political overtones, but that isn't why i chose
it. one finds that "wimps" is a favorite term of the right for whipping
anyone on the left for almost anything. 

let's just say i don't find the term useful in its political
applications.

i am using it to mean psychologically fragile. and it's an
equal-opportunity affliction. the parenting phenomenon i discuss is
common among dems and republicans. 
  

    
Why did you choose the term "wimp" to describe children who are
psychologically fragile: how is it useful?
  

    
It had a long history. Ten years ago, I had a conversation with a
prominent psychologist about many things, including childrearing. He
told me that when he was 7 or 8 and living in Philadelphia, he went
alone with his cousin, all of 11, to a major league baseball game in
Philly. No one thought twice about it. And we both agreed that today
any parent doing that would be arrested for negligence. We laughed and
agreed that we were producing a nation of wimps, kids too afraid to do
anything on their own. 

That conversation stayed in my mind when, almost four years ago, I
wrote a major article for Psychology Today about parents taking the
lumps and bumps out of childhood for their kids, and what some of the
consequences were. I described the "spreading psychic fault line" of
today's young people, and said, "whether we want to or not, we're
raising a nation of wimps." It wasn't mean spirited in the slightest,
and everyone understood that. It simply described kids with no
backbone, who were unable to cope because they had never been allowed
to try much of anything on their own, and were easily overwhelmed by
the slightest difficulty. The article was wildly popular, won many
awards, was called "one of the most important articles of the year,"
and led, along with a few subsequent articles, to the book. 
  

    
i find the class-anxiety very helpful in understanding this
phenom. the fear of being downwardly mobile, and general
precariousness, helped me to understanding why
a relative of mine, of whom i am very fond, a former
hippy of all kinds of adventures/alt pathways ---
has been just the most awful helicopter parent. and
why the offsprings of said beloved relatuve have always
struck me as emotionally, intellectually, and psychologically
retarded. deeply incurious, immature --- and uninteresting
as -people-. and these were kids, because of the parentage,
i had -wanted- and -expected- to like. said relative,
without getting into detials, often makes statements
about public school kids and other offputting anxious
remarks that reveal a surprising fear of riffraffness,
given the relative's lack of interesting in
materialism and flash, and general hippy values.

and when these kids have begun to screwup and make
mistakes, as happens in adolescence, my relative
helicopters in ever more tightly. it's a mess...
  

    
What's really funny is that on my local town list (which has a pretty
sharp old-townie/newcomer divide) I'm being lumped on the *other* side
with the hovering helicopter moms because I've been one of several
folks complaining about the middle schoolers not being able to carry
water bottles. They have three minutes between classes, are forbidden
or discouraged from drinking between classes, and discouraged from
interrupting class to get water. 

Seems to me the point where parents can legitimately get involved is
where kids can't solve their own problem because there's an obstacle
bigger than they are in the way (like No Child Left Behind, or this
school's nutty policy). Although now that I think about it I can see
that maybe it could be an interesting lesson in political organizing
for the kids. Or a lesson in how speaking out can make you unpopular,
so we'll see. 
  

    
Well, you've pretty much described a full-blown case, complete with
cause. Ex-hippies are not immune to anxiety about their kids
maintaining the class status of the parents. You'd think they'd try to
apply different values. But this phenomenon is very powerful and just
sucks people in. There are lots of reinforcers at work, not least being
the harsh judgment rendered by other parents. It's very hard for
parents to resist, even those who "know" better. Many have confided
their inner and outer struggles to me. 

Betsy...what a wonderful opportunity to give the kids a lesson in
organizing and speaking up responsibly.
  

    
 I've been catching up on this topic. I will look forward
 to reading your book, and hope you'll consider a  question or two in
the meantime.

  How would one go about guiding and mentoring the child of
 an overprotective parent?  My son is 15, a math whiz
 and his mom (my former wife), reads all his homework (except
 for the math) and "edits" his work.  I've read the before
 and after results, and its clear to me that from time to time she's
writing his homework not merely "editing". I get concerned that my son
turns the work in as his own that is not really his own. And I'm
finding my teenager procrastinates, though I think its because he's
waiting for his mom to complete her "edits" on his work.
 I think its overprotective to the max.

 Before long college will arrive and I fear my teenager will
 have some unexpected surprises if he can't do the work.

 What might I do to help my son?
  

    
well, you;d think exhippies would rememebr all the ways
they dropped out/'screwed up' in the conventional sense/
ended up at nonnambrand colleges/experimented/got into
odd situations/explored/didnt know what they were up to/
fell on their faces/followed their snouts/rerouted and
tried again --- and turned out ok.

you'd think.
  

    
How did ex-hippies come into this? And parental class status? I'm
confused. 
  

    
<betsys>, if scroll back up, you'll see comments about
class anxiety referenced. fear of the current economic
precariousness is part of what is driving this phenom.

and i brought up my exhippy relative (who as an
adult reallt retains these values) as an example of
someone also sucked up into this --- and someone
i wouldnt have expected to.