Being a "hyper-parent" is a recipe for burned-out kids

"A generation ago, childhood was merely a jouney along the way to adulthood. Now it is no longer a preparation but a full-dress performance for life, " says Dr. Alvin Rosenfeld. (Kevin Manning/P-D)

By Renee Stovsky
Of the Post-Dispatch
 
 

Canyoneering, ice climbing, skydiving, bungee jumping.

In a society addicted to extreme sports, we've even managed to turn cardiovascular training and yoga into power aerobics and Pilates.

But the top adult competitive sport in America these days is child-rearing, according to Dr. Alvin Rosenfeld, co-author with Nicole Wise of "Hyper-Parenting" (St. Martin's Press, $22.95). And there can be serious consequences to this real-life version of ESPN's "X-Games," he says.

"A generation ago, childhood was merely a journey along the way to adulthood. Now it is no longer a preparation but a full-dress performance for life," says Rosenfeld, a Stamford, Conn., child psychiatrist.

"With the best of intentions, parents are living their lives like a relentless to-do list -- overscheduling, overenriching and micromanaging every detail of their kids' days, and living in constant fear that their children will underperform in any area -- academic, social or athletic," he adds.

In doing so, he says, parents are not only losing a sense of balance in their own lives, but setting their kids up for failure. The pressure to perform -- be it in the classroom, on the soccer field or at a piano recital -- is making today's children feel inept, insecure and devoid of real value.

Consider these real-life examples of power parenting to which Rosenfeld has been privy:

* The anxious parents of a newborn who offered a nanny a $500 bonus for every developmental milestone their child beat.

* The father of a 7-year-old who hired a dollar-a-minute "stroke coach" to strengthen his son's freestyle lest he fall behind in swim competitions.

* The parents of a child, fleetingly enamored with dinosaurs, who engaged in laborious Internet searches, planned theme parties and took family vacations to further his knowledge of paleontology.

* The mothers of high school girls who requested cosmetic procedures such as liposuction and breast enlargements to improve their pubescent daughters' appearances.

So what's behind this pushy-parent phenomena? Why have we become a generation of stage mothers, obsessed to achieve by proxy?

Rosenfeld, a father of three who admits to being a "hyper-parent in partial recovery," has several theories. Chief among them is that parents today have deep, collective feelings of anxiety that have turned us into major control freaks.

"This generation has taken on real, new responsibilities. We aspire to equal, intimate, male/female relationships. And we want to be involved with our children, instead of raising them through benign neglect," he says.

When you combine that with societal pressures -- dual-career couples who avoid latchkey situations by scheduling kids for multiple after-school activities, empty or unsafe neighborhoods that restrict kids' abilities to freely roam and amuse themselves, medical technology that allows us to try to "customize" our kids while they are in the womb --it's no wonder that angst is running rampant.

To make matters worse, both the media and the marketing world are playing on parents' insecurity. Books, magazines and television talk shows discuss brain development, day care, self-esteem and sibling rivalry ad nauseum while educational toy companies churn out everything from Mozart CDs for the unborn to microscopes with computer imaging for grade schoolers.

"We are rearing children to get 'the right result,' " says Rosenfeld, rather than respecting children for who they are and forging meaningful relationships with them.

Carol Kaplan-Lyss, a parent educator in Clayton for more than 20 years, agrees that competitiveness has spiraled among parents in the last few years.

"When I first started teaching, mothers compared how early toddlers were toilet trained," says Kaplan-Lyss. "Now they feel that if they are not providing every opportunity for enrichment, they are not being 'good enough' parents."

In the process, Kaplan-Lyss says, parents forget that there is value in a child learning to entertain himself and -- yes -- even experience boredom.

"Studies show that when children perform for extrinsic reasons, they no longer develop a feeling of wanting to accomplish something on their own," she says. "Children need a sense of inner motivation, and they need to learn resourcefulness."

Equally important is that we grown-ups get a life, says Rosenfeld.

"Parental fulfillment is not a child's job," he says. "While we drown in carpools and crowded calendars, trapped by high expectations and ever-escalating standards, we also end up ignoring, sometimes even sacrificing, our interests, friendships and often marriage -- not to mention our sense of what is sensible."

So how do we break the power-parenting cycle?

Though Kaplan-Lyss says "it's going to have to be the next bandwagon," there are people who already are deciding to put the brakes on a pressured, perpetual motion kind of family life.

Francine Case, an administrative assistant at Webster University, says she staves off the temptation to overschedule by "listening to my kids."

"If they express interest in something -- basketball, ballet or whatever -- I try to balance it with other things we are involved in before I make a commitment," says Case, whose children are 8 and 13. "I get exhausted just hearing about some of their friends' schedules. My kids know that our family's interests are different. Downtime is important to us."

Carolyn Jenkins, owner of Jenkins Communications, a home-based marketing firm, says she made a decision not to "overprogram" her kids -- now 10 and 12 --when they were just toddlers. As part of that commitment, she's instituted "jammie" time on Saturday morning -- time for family members to lollygag at home instead of rushing off to the latest enrichment class, play date or team practice.

"Part of my commitment to keep things low-key evolved out of my own value system. I really believe that kids need time to listen to themselves, or they won't know who they are," she says.

"The other part is purely selfish. My kids are growing up so fast; I want to cherish every minute of their childhood. So many families get caught up in giving their children too much instead of giving them time ... but stuff breaks, and then you can't get the time back."

Which is Rosenfeld's point, exactly.

"If we don't want to be hyper-parents, then we need to stop rushing about and start thinking about what kind of values we want to pass on to our children and what kind of life we want to model for them. Activities do nothing to create intimacy and fulfill emotional needs," says Rosenfeld.

"What children really want is not to be prodigies, but to be with us. And do we, as parents, want to live a life so crazed that we need color-coded calendars and pocket-sized computers to keep track of our families' schedules?"