A Catered Generation?

Parent Cafe
41

<p>Yes, I think I parent differently than my mother did. We have discussed this and though we were both stay at home moms, the times are so different.
1.When I was a child there were few structured activities even offered, so only choice was free play.
–Now if a child isn’t involved in activities, he’s likely to have to play alone because all his friends are “signed up”.</p>

<ol>
<li><p>Crime in the past at least seemed much lower, perhaps the media just didn’t write about it as much. But my parents were not fearful of child predators, muggers, drug users/dealers, weapons, etc.</p></li>
<li><p>Cell phones didn’t exist. As my mom said—we just hoped you were safe and would be back by stated time–no way to call and check on kids.</p></li>
<li><p>Contact with parents from college was minimal because had to be mainly letter writing. We talked on phone every other Sunday, because to do more was just too expensive.</p></li>
<li><p>In the past people didn’t sue the parents or charge the child for any and every little problem that cropped up—boys fighting on the playground, child hurt on another’s property, etc.</p></li>
</ol>

<p>My mother says there is no way she would want to raise children now—just too many things to worry about.</p>

<p>And that is my biggest problem. Like a previous poster stated, I rarely act on my worries, but they sure do keep me up at night. And since I do share some of them with the kids, it has earned me the nickname of “Psycho Mom”—if there isn’t something to worry about, I’ll create it!</p>

42

<p>I invested in sending my son to the Costa Rica Outward Bound course last summer. A few weeks trudging through the mountains, dealing with mosquitos and watching a bot fly get removed from the body, highly recommended trip & it helped tremendously in allowing him to see another aspect of life. Now he’s at a service academy having a parent free adventure with only three five minute phone calls allowed the entire summer. It’s definitely tougher on him than us, but, even the service academies are more parent friendly than they use to be.</p>

43

<p>Of course there are those things we let or encourage our children to do (against the pull of my worry filled mind) that turn out badly and serve to reinforce our hovering.</p>

<p>I let my oldest do a month in Italy with his school when he was 20. On this trip, while in Florence, he was kidnapped at knife point by 3 men (grabbed from the back of the group as they were getting in cabs), held for 12 hours, beaten, robbed and taken to ATM and forced to withdraw as much money as allowed. Luckily no permanent injuries, and it has not prevented him from traveling more—but it sure does make me think “Yes it can happen to us!”.</p>

44

<p>OMgosh, Mkm, that is awful. Thank G-d your son was OK!</p>

45

<p>Yes, the germophobes are tough to take when you are a “eat a peck of dirt” kind of parent (and housekeeper)! Don’t even get me started on their reaction to ants, worms, crickets, and yes, butterflies. </p>

<p>We’ve always tried to add freedoms and choice incrementally, and were lucky to live in a small town where friends, the pizza parlor, school and pool are walkable or bikeable. The big milestone was when you let your kid cross Main Street.</p>

46

<p>When my oldest was born I was told by a wise mother of 5: With your first, when the pacifier drops to the floor, you will sterilize it before you use it again. With your second, you will run hot water over it. For your third, you will pick it up and wipe it off, and by the time the fourth one comes, you will pull the d**n thing out of the digs mouth and return it to the baby’'s mouth! I do think I boiled a few with my first, but skipped ahead to number three by the time the second daughter arrived 17 mos later. We stopped there. </p>

<p>Medical research has shown that lack of exposure to enough germs at a young age is in fact detrimental later. </p>

<p>And I regularly “scrub” prior to entering the operating room, yet I refuse to purchase any antibacterial bath or kitchen products. I use old fashion cleaning proucts–I do not plan to grow super bugs with plenty of resistance in my home. </p>

<p>I cannot imagine the rubber gloves on the playground.</p>

47

<p>THE BIRTH ORDER OF CHILDREN </p>

<p>One for the ladies</p>

<p>Your Clothes:
1st baby: You begin wearing maternity clothes as soon as your OB/GYN confirms your pregnancy.
2nd baby: You wear your regular clothes for as long as possible.
3rd baby: Your maternity clothes ARE your regular clothes.</p>

<p>Preparing for the Birth:
1st baby: You practice your breathing religiously.
2nd baby: You don’t bother because you remember that last time, breathing didn’t do a thing.
3rd baby: You ask for an epidural in your eighth month. </p>

<p>The Layette:
1st baby: You pre-wash newborn’s clothes, color-coordinate them, and fold them neatly in the baby’s little bureau.
2nd baby: You check to make sure that the clothes are clean and discard only the ones with the darkest stains.
3rd baby: Boys can wear pink, can’t they? </p>

<p>Worries:
1st baby: At the first sign of distress–a whimper, a frown–you pick up the baby.
2nd baby: You pick the baby up when her wails threaten to wake your firstborn.
3rd baby: You teach your three-year-old how to rewind the mechanical swing.</p>

<p>Pacifier:
1st baby: If the pacifier falls on the floor, you put it away until you can go home and wash and boil it.
2nd baby: When the pacifier falls on the floor, you squirt it off with some juice from the baby’s bottle.
3rd baby: You wipe it off on your shirt and pop it back in.</p>

<p>Diapering:
1st baby: You change your baby’s diapers every hour, whether they need it or not.
2nd baby: ! You change their diaper every two to three hours, if needed.
3rd baby: You try to change their diaper before others start to complain about the smell or you see it sagging to their knees.</p>

<p>Activities:
1st baby: You take your infant to Baby Gymnastics, Baby Swing, and Baby Story Hour.
2nd baby: You take your infant to Baby Gymnastics.
3rd baby: You take your infant to the supermarket and the dry cleaner.</p>

<p>Going Out:
1st baby: The first time you leave your baby with a sitter, you call home five times.
2nd baby: Just before you walk out the door, you remember to leave a number where you can be reached.
3rd baby: You! leave instructions for the sitter to call only if she sees blood
At Home:
1st baby: You spend a good bit of every day just gazing at the baby.
2nd baby: You spend a bit of everyday watching to be sure your older child isn’t squeezing, poking, or hitting the baby.
3rd baby: You spend a little bit of every day hiding from the children. </p>

<p>Swallowing Coins (a favorite):
1st child: When first child swallows a coin, you rush the child to the hospital and demand x-rays.
2nd child: When second child swallows a coin, you carefully watch for the coin to pass.
3rd child: When third child swallows a coin you deduct it from his allowance!</p>

<p>Found this from wicked thoughts…hahaha</p>

48

<p>Loved that ^^. Brought back many memories and how true! We had 3 and I think it fit pretty well —except maybe the coin one (didn’t have enought spare change laying around for the kids to find!).</p>

49

<p>Hey, one of my friends asked me the other day what I would do about an incident that happened at his office. A mother called up wanting to know where to send her son’s resume. The son is a junior in architecture school, and she wants him to work when he comes home for the summer. Personally, I would have given her a touch of advice, along the lines of: “Don’t bother. I’m not going to hire your son, because he doesn’t have the initiative to call me himself, and I don’t want to deal with you every time I ask him to do something.” </p>

<p>Does anybody else feel like that is going a bit overboard? Yeah, I understand parents who mention to a friend who’s an architect that Johnny’s coming home for the summer and will be looking for an internship, and something gets set up that way. But calling total strangers asking them to give your kid a job? That’s too much for me. I agree with the author on the basic premise, that many parents are coddling their children too much, not letting them develop themselves out of fear. BUT, the thing about the Charles River is probably the school trying to cover their ass from lawsuits, IMO.</p>

50

<p>this is more about us than them…</p>

<p>shouldn’t this be more of a reflection of us, the parents of gen x/y/z, than that of our kids?</p>

<p>as parents, we will always be judged by how our kids turn out in life, as we are the living legacies of our own parents. </p>

<p>the generation that follows always validate the one that preceded them.</p>

51

<p>Well, I only had two kids, but I saw myself in the third kid examples “boys can wear pink, can’t they?” and “you teach your 3 year old how to rewind up the mechanical swing.” Yup–had to get dinner cooked somehow, esp as H was a med student slash resident and pretty much MIA for the duration.</p>

52

<p>It seems to have started for the current generation with “play dates” (no such thing when I was a kid) and then its the balancing of Little League, AYSO, music lessons, some more “play dates”, religious school, voice lessons, tennis lessons, internet, text-messaging, ipods, some more “play dates” and on and on> But, the same lament ultimately goes from generation to generation ( with all apologies to Conrad Birdie):</p>

<p>Kids!
I don’t know what’s wrong with these kids today!
Kids!
Who can understand anything they say?
Kids!
They are disobedient, disrespectful oafs!
Noisy, crazy, dirty, lazy, loafers!
While we’re on the subject:
Kids!
You can talk and talk till your face is blue!
Kids!
But they still just do what they want to do!
Why can’t they be like we were,
Perfect in every way?
What’s the matter with kids today?
Kids!
I’ve tried to raise him the best I could
Kids! Kids!
Laughing, singing, dancing, grinning, morons!
And while we’re on the subject!
Kids! They are just impossible to control!
Kids! With their awful clothes and their rock an’ roll!
Why can’t they dance like we did
What’s wrong with Sammy Caine?
What’s the matter with kids today</p>

53

<p>I turn 20 in September, so I want to give a few cents here:</p>

<p>First, I think it’s good that parents are more involved in kids lives. In the generation of most of these parents (baby boomers), there were a ton of problems, especially drugs. While there are still druggies out there today, the number is fewer than what it was around 1972 or so. I think having more involved parents helps here.</p>

<p>Second, about the whole camp thing. I never went away to camp and I have no independence problems. The most I ever did was go to a computer class or something. This was a big topic on the first page of this post (the only one I’ve really read).</p>

<p>However, I have a lot of problems with my generation:</p>

<ol>
<li><p>They are way too fond of premarital sex. I vow to abstain until marriage, but 75% of this generation doesn’t seem to want to.</p></li>
<li><p>Movies and music are horrible, as are many of the video games. Parents, take a look at some of the flicks your kids watch. Rap music is disgusting, as is most stuff the people make today. The exception is European trance, which is the only elegant stuff left. And all the video games are about killing stuff. Whatever happened to Pong?</p></li>
<li><p>Cell phones, especially text messaging, has made people lazy. Kids are just too darn lazy to pick up the phone and actually talk these days. I refuse to text message. People send me the messages and I never respond because I have no interest in text messaging. It’s lazy and the stuff they write is in this foreign shorthand language. Now people can find out where you are 24/7 because so many people have a phone on them. Personally, I’d rather hop in my car and go away if I wanted down time, without having people calling me. But that’s what the off button is for :-)</p></li>
<li><p>As much as I love computers, they have made us lazy. Anyone here ever do math without calculators anymore? There are a ton of college kids who can’t do long division, can’t write in cursive, and don’t know what the library is.</p></li>
<li><p>This generation seems to party way too much. And there’s too many geeks in it too (i.e. chronic video gamers and kids who play with six sided dice).</p></li>
<li><p>People don’t seem to be as polite as in years past either.</p></li>
</ol>

<p>The world is going to CRASH because of this generation. They won’t save it and all the good old folks will just die off.</p>

<p>Don’t blame the parents, blame the media. Frankly I wish I was turning 100 so I knew my time left here would be up soon.</p>

54

<p>*When my oldest was born I was told by a wise mother of 5: I do think I boiled a few with my first, but skipped ahead to number three by the time the second daughter arrived 17 mos later. We stopped there. *
I think I must know the same mother of 5 that you know.
When I was still on my first she told me that if they come running up to her and bleeding- she knows that they aren’t hurt enough to be immobile so she warns them not to come any closer.:slight_smile:
I didn’t quite do that- but I do belong to the immunity school of housecleaning. I had good intentions, particulary since when my first came home from the hospital she didn’t weigh 4 lbs, but I couldn’t keep it up. Besides it was summer and doesn’t the sun sterilize everything?</p>

55

<p>*However, I have a lot of problems with my generation:</p>

<ol>
<li>They are way too fond of premarital sex.*</li>
</ol>

<p>Have you met your parents generation?
For that matter your great - great grandparents generation? ( counting on fingers)
We * invented premaritial sex * doncha know ;)</p>

56

<p>MacTech I agree with you on all the points, especially the one regarding movies and music. 95% of Hollywood films these days are utter garbage. People who can’t do math without calculators tick me off too. I remember that I didn’t touch a calc for a whole year in my 7E Math class (I had just immigrated), while the whole class was constantly using them…sheesh.</p>

57

<p>"Anyone here ever do math without calculators anymore? "</p>

<p>Hey, you’re talking to someone who took a slide rule to college chemistry :)!</p>

<p>I don’t understand the text messaging thing either. Okay, I know if I want to send a quick message to someone who I know is busy, it might be less intrusive to just type “Meet me at 2”—but the kids seem to use it for whole conversations when the other person is available to talk! Wouldn’t a call be easier than all that typing?</p>

58

<p>“Yes this generation expects to have their egos inflated unnecessarily, and also expects a ‘great job!’ for even the most stupid thing they can do.” posted by iloveagoodbrew</p>

<p>When my daughter was 3 years old I read a book by a psychologist who said that we should stop saying “great job” after every single picture our child drew because by the time they reached 5th grade they would know that we had lied. The author suggested that instead we comment on the colors the child chose to use in the drawing. So the next time my daughter drew a picture, instead of saying my usual “great job,” I said that I really liked the colors she picked and she said “What’s the matter, don’t you like the picture?” :)</p>

59

<p>

</p>

<ol>
<li><p>I have pre-marital sex (just not as often as I’d like). I’ll even one up you, I smoke marijuana and hookah on a regular basis. I also have a good (not great) GPA. I pay for my own education and rent (Montreal is absolutely beautiful for students because of cheap rents), have my own job and have been investing on my own for years, since I was 14 and I am in the process of buying my own condo. I recently turned 21. Can you honestly say that pre-martial sex, drugs and alcohol have hurt me that much? </p></li>
<li><p>Movies are not as bad as you may think. See, the problem is, people tend to look on the past through filtered lenses. People who grew up watching movies in the 70’s probably won’t remember crap like the Osmonds. They’ll remember listening to Led Zeppelin and Queen. They’ll remember Taxi Driver, not Ice Pirates. Similiarly, this collective generation will look back on our youths and remember Edward Norton and Brad Pitt in Fight Club, not Jennifer Lopez in Gigli. Movies in the past were just as violent if not more than they are today in some cases. I dare you to find a modern day equivalent of Last House on the Left or Cannibal Holocaust, a movie infamous for being so graphic it was thought to be an actual snuff film by Italian authorities and contains actual scenes where animals are killed. </p></li>
</ol>

<p>Don’t even get me started on music, you can hate on rap music all you want but all it’s really doing is taking the sex, drugs and rock n’roll thing and running with it. What else is new? Thoughtful music still exists, you just have to find it and download it.</p>

<p>Video games, not just about killing. Yes, the Grand Theft Auto series has been mega-popular and a boon for Take 2’s stockholders (me!), but the media sensationalizes these games. What most people don’t take into account is that for every Grand Theft Auto, there’s a Civilization IV, another megapopular game (great for Activision stockholders like me) that challenges you to take a small tribe and build it into a prospering civlization through 5000 years of history. Not much media coverage on Civilization IV though eh, wonder why that is?</p>

<ol>
<li><p>Your cellphone arguement is absolutely no different from the TV is making kids dumb arguement we used to have. Truth is, collectively we are all smarter. Children are being exposed to complex technologies at a younger age, information gets to your eyes faster than ever. Take a guy from 1972 and bring him into our world, could he survive? No. Could a guy from 2002 survive in 1972? Probably, with a little difficulty but most likely yes. Most people know how to use 1972 technology, it’s just inconvienent to. </p></li>
<li><p>Computers haven’t made us lazy. Have you looked at the statistics? The machine that was supposed to eliminate the need for the 40 hour work week is one of the causes for people having less free time these days. I doubt there are that many college students unable to divide 572 by 12 on paper. I highly doubt that people in college don’t know what or where a library is, where do you think a lot of us study? The liquour store? Finally, cursive writing? When was the last time you ever needed to use cursive? The third grade? You might as well be lamenting the death of the typewriter and felt-tipped pen. Cursive is like Latin. Sure, it’s nice to know, but it’s not really gonna hurt anyone if you don’t. Oh, just for the record, most math exams at McGill disallow the use of a calculator.</p></li>
<li><p>Oh right, people back in the day never partied. Like the the idea of frat boy is exlcusive to the MTV generation. I love how you whine about people partying too much one second and then whine about people who don’t party enough in the next. What’s it to you how people choose to have fun? If they want go to the strip club on Friday and spend Saturday mornings playing Halo 2 instead of learning to write cursive so what?</p></li>
<li><p>Yeah, they said that about hippies as well. Then GenXers. It’s just our turn up at the plate now. Big deal. Wahwahwah.</p></li>
</ol>

60

<p>Helicopter parenting isn’t about being a good parent, or an overcautious one - it is about stepping between your child and life to the extent that students are either unable to function when faced with any sort of challenge, or worse, understand their parents to be some sort of glorified personal assistant - what a crappy relationship that must be. </p>

<p>I have seen some astonishing examples of it, and I have seen schools struggle to find ways to engage parents while at the same time keeping them from hovering so much, but it is important to realize how incredibly detrimental helicopter parenting is to those being parented.</p>

<p>This isn’t about ‘oh, that generation - those kids! Back in my day…’ posturing. It is about the fact that we have many, many college students who are frozen in their own lives, unable to function when faced with the slightest adversity, and that this kind of student, in increasingly large numbers, is a new phenomena in higher education. And it is these students - who are bright, and talented, and utterly lost - that are so heartbreaking to see. At a time when you expect to see young people gaining more confidence, and stretching for more challenge, increasing numbers pull back from life, from challenge, from adversity. </p>

<p>And worse still is that as these students get quietly more passive, their parents get more and more frustrated, because they can’t figure out why their bright kid isn’t pushing for a great internship, or winning a Marshall or a Rhodes, or isn’t hotly pursued by on campus recruiters, so they hover more, and the kids retreat farther into themselves. it is painful and sad to watch. </p>

<p>I am not fond of the pop writing articles about this phenomenon, but at the same time, it is a problem. And the next wave are the ‘Black Hawks’ - the helicopter parents that, with military precision, mow down every obstacle in their kid’s path with little regard to how their actions impact other people.</p>

<p>Now Black Hawks - those are fun parents to watch!</p>