And then they go, “why is my child suffering from anxiety, hmm, what a mystery.”
Strawberry there is giving brilliant advice but try getting people to listen.
9 responses to “A Silent Hour”
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So much of the deliberate parenting strategy (it’s mostly accidental, but you know, the part where we actually have a plan and are trying…) is simply trying to re-create for my kids, the boredom of my own childhood: no screens, very few “activities.” Works pretty well: they just go and find stuff to do. Without me.
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Like: I don’t think people– adults OR kids– understand that nobody has to be intentionally diverted every second of the day, and actually that’s a bad thing. I try to protect my kids from overstimulation, overscheduling, and overmanagement. The problem is that now the parents have grown up in an environment where their whole existence is aggressive distraction/stimulation punctuated by scheduled activities, and they still live there. They don’t think about anything because who has the time and anyway their phones populate their minds with predigested subjects and preformed opinions on said subjects. Nothing else can get in.
So of course they raise their kids that way too. They are not permitted to even ask if there is any other way.
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“nobody has to be intentionally diverted every second of the day”
I am soooo glad I finished school before the idea that children’s and teens’ time has to be packed with resume padding activities… When we wanted to do something our parents helped (if it was feasible) but were also fine if we just wanted to go outside and play with the dogs or ride bikes around or whatever.
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Shoot, not just resume padding. I’ve watched way too many parents regard any lacunae in their little kids’ time as… dangerous, perhaps. Like oh, we’re home, better shove some approved cartoon or “educational” electronic game in front of the kid. Are they afraid the child will detonate? Or just interrupt their perusal of Instagram? Either way they seem to operate from a model where kids need to be constantly stimulated. Give it ten years and there’ll be papers on what type of brain damage this causes.
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There’s this panic among parents (and it causes a lot of stress to the kids) that you have to have a lot of extracurriculars or else you won’t be competitive for college. The perception is that you can’t be a just a good student who otherwise enjoys his friends, free time, and/or has unremarkable (not competitive, not high-visibility) hobbies and still get into a good school.
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A conservative literary critic and college professor
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