ALL Parents and Children

[Yermenko]

Forgive me if this is a mess. Feel free to jump to the end.

Soooooo??I feel sorry for kids today. My nephew (age 15) is a great young man. Good grades, athletic, funny, and just plain likeable. And he showed up at my door at 2 in the morning in tears. He came in and had what I, as a layman, would call a mental breakdown. His mother (my sister) has been pushing him way too far, and I never even knew. And this sort of thing seems to be happening all over the country.

So here is a little rundown of his activities and what his mother expects.

Boy scouts- He must reach Eagle
Swim Team- He must be varsity
Piano- Lessons twice a week
He is also on the debate team, takes honors course work, is treasurer of the student council, is big in his church youth group. Hell, when he was younger he also did pretty much every Rec sport offered.

Add to that the social pressures of being 15 in today?s world. He asked for an iphone because every other student in his school has one. It is apparently a faux pas not to update your face book every five minutes, or miss a tweet. And at 15 you get to worry about sex, drugs, and being popular (you know, the stuff we worried about at that age).

This would have killed me. But he has taken it in stride. But now his mom is putting him in an SAT prep class because he should have his college picked by next year. And that was the proverbial straw. He is going to have an ulcer by 16!

I drove him home had a word with my sister. It didn?t go well. I told her that her son needed to take some time off from being Wonder Teen, and that she should try not to push him or his little sister (only 7)into more then they can handle. She started by arguing that every kid at his school does this much. Then she swore she didn?t force him into anything. Then she went on the attack, pointing out that had our parents pushed me a little more I wouldn?t be ?an unmarried college dropout, with no right to tell her how to raise her children?. Then she threw me out. By the time I got home my mother had called my cell 4 times. My lovely sister had just sent her a text informing her that she was an awful parent and she was going to make sure her kids didn?t turn out as losers. So yeah??.bit of a mess.

Anyway, to get to my point (I have one, I have one) are American parents pushing kids too hard? Should we start them in football at 4? Hit the Beauty Pageant scene at 7? Should they do 10 hours of review for standardized testing each week? I know we want our kids to excel, but it all seemsjust seems pants on head insane. Right? Right? Give me your take on parents and kids.

 

[Blow_Pop]

I think some parents do push their kids too hard. What they should be doing is asking their kids if it is what they WANT to do. I mean if a kid wants to do football/beauty pageants at a young age then let it be their choice and support them. My parents forced me into working directly out of high school (though technically I worked through half of middle school and all of high school babysitting) but as far as schooling and sports and such they wanted me to excel but never forced me...except for CCD as a child and church but....Though now they are starting to try and force me into shite and tis a bit ridiculous seeing as how I am now an adult.....

 

[luther7718]

Man, it sounds to me like that lady has some problems. When you went to talk to her, were you confrontational? Or can she simply not be reasoned with at all?

 

[Hamish Durie]

I know what you mean age 14
basketball team
chess club
robot club (not as cool as it sounds)
drums
soccer
the list goes on but I have homework

 

[b3nn3tt]

Well, many parents do push their kids too hard, yes. I like to think that this is born from a desire to see their kids do well, and they don't realise how bad it is for the kids. This is preferable to the alternative in my mind; that the parents are so fixated on their kids doing well so that they can live vicariously through them that they don't care about the impact on the kids.

But I don't know why the topic has to be directed specifically at American parents, I'm sure there are people from every country that push their kids in the same way. Unfortunately, it's probably pretty widespread.

 

[ShindoL Shill]

christ thats a lot of pressure. kids should only do what they want to do.
i can only agree with her on looking at colleges. i'm 15 as well and two years away from university, and i need to know what grades i need to get in.
but texting her mother and saying she's a bad parent, and making your kids achieve certain levels of everything is completely stupid.

 

[warprincenataku]

American parents aren't pushing their kids no more than any other nationality. Japanese students study 6-7 days a week for 10+ hours a day.

Thai students, mine inparticular, study from 8:30 in the morning until 6:30 in the evening six days a week. The boys usually have scouts twice a week, plus clubs and sometimes sports. The girls usually have the same, minus the scouts, and usually some sort of musical class.

So yeah, you want your kids to succeed, push them until they crack.

 

[TheLaofKazi]

Yes. Holy fucking shit, yes.

Kids need time to themselves to learn how to draw on their own resources and experiment with interests. It's essential to self-development and to discovering what really makes you happy. When a kid has to worry doing well in a plethora of structured activities, he's not going to have time to breath and reflect on himself.

Success =/= happiness.

If you went into college and found it wasn't you, then that's fine, and that's nothing to be ashamed of. I'd rather be that (and hell, probably will be that) then be a mentally and emotionally unhealthy wreck that's obsessed with success and superficial happiness.

Although not chasing after that conventional 'American dream' is not to be confused with being lazy and trapped in destructive comfort.

The goal of parents should not be to push their kids to succeed, but to inspire and nurture them to succeed and support them in their own goals. Not yours.

 

[Yermenko]

I guess it does not need to be "american". I know Japan is way crazy. Cram schoold/ social pressure/ huge suicide rate. My bad. ALL Parents and Children!

 

[008Zulu_v1legacy]

Guess I got lucky. My grandmother favoured my uncle over my mother, as a result my mother favoured my sisters over my brother and I. Gave me remarkable freedom.

Every country has parents that can screw up, and every country has parents that try to live through their kids. For the lucky few out there, some kids will realize that their parents did a less than satisfactory job of raising them and do better with their kids. To some this will appear to be overbearing, but they are just making sure that their kids don't grow up to be like them. Those are the good parents.

If you want to make an omelet, you gotta break a few eggs.

 

[Angry Camel]

I don't think this is just limited to America. My cousin (I live in Australia BTW) was bigged up by her parents who were saying that she should skip Year one and go on to Year 2. They're both school principals, so they thought they knew what they were talking about. Turned out she was under-performing in Year 1.

I think this severe over-drive from parents to push kids to excel at everything is partly due to asian people spreading their culture amoungst ours (please don't flame me for saying this. Asia has made a multitude of positive contributions to global society). Since they have such a fierce drive to succeed, many people seem to view them as a threat, so they try to beat them at their own game. As we can see with your example, Yermenko, this is not producing happy people.

I think parents really need to shift their focus of how they measure success with their children. Academic ability and athleticness can be part of that, but there needs to be more emphasis on how happy kids feel. All the A grades in the world won't make you feel better if you don't have any time to do what you want. And having a high paying job is worthless if you feel the need to kill yourself every time you're there.

 

[Colour Scientist]

That's an extraordinary amount of pressure for a 15 year old.

My mom (we're not American) let me take a load of extra-curricular activities when I was little (drama, gymnastics, judo, piano, horse-rising) and then let me pursue which ever one appealed to me most (which was horse-riding because I was a little girl and they were FUCKING PONIES). She's always pushed me academically but I was never punished or anything if I didn't do as well as she wanted me to.

I think your sister's intentions are ultimately in the right place but being a parent is an incredibly difficult job and it's unfair to judge her if you've never tried it yourself. The kid isn't going to sit down and talk to her the way he talks to you because she's his mother but that's what he needs to do. Has he tried telling her how much this affects him? Or even discussing cutting down his commitments just a little bit?

Then she swore she didn?t force him into anything.

The way she sees it she probably didn't. It's not about directly forcing him, she probably seriously encouraged him and he's so afraid of disappointing her that he feels as though he has to do it.

 

[Not-here-anymore]

Eh, the flip-side is parents who just don't give a shit as to what their child does/doesn't do, see discipline as a rude word, and blame everyone else when the kid starts failing things at school.

There's theoretically a middle ground somewhere, but not many people find it.

 

[Yermenko]

I am the first one to say that I am not really the father type. And, the way he tells it, yes he talked to her about dropping piano and the sat thing. But, he is 15 so....he may not have been clear.And I dont mean to dump on her as a "crappy mom", I respect the things she has done.But I dont think I was confrontational, and the way it all went down threw me pretty hard. And she wont speak to me right now, so I am sort of waiting for her to cool off.

 

[Tselis]

There is no doubt that the American Public Education system is a flaming pile of ass and recoil. Let me start off by throwing that out there. Having said that though, your sister is making a monster that will bite her in the ass. When her children grow up to be 'not losers', they are going to hate her, and are going to rebound into to pretty hairy stuff. Why? Because that's the way the human mind works. The teen age years are for growing, learning and developing into the person that they will be for th rest of their life. If she ever wants her kids to love her, and not resent her and cut her off from their lives, then she minght want to try being a mom, and not a drill instructor. >.> I kinda have some personal experiance in over bearing parents, so yeah ...

 

[BreakfastMan]

I honestly don't understand people who do that. My parents never really pushed me to do anything. If I wanted to do it, they supported and helped me every step of the way, but they never pushed me to do extracurricular activities that I didn't want to do. I didn't study for the SAT, and I didn't pick out the college I wanted to go to until I was 17. Guess what? I scored over 1900 on the SAT and I got into a university that is both one of the best in the state and the entire country. Just be supportive and encourage your child in whatever they decided to do, and everything will be fine (well, most likely anyway).

 

[Kolby Jack]

Hmmm, this is a tough call. The kid is obviously pretty stressed out, so I'd suggest to the mom letting him choose a couple of the things he really doesn't like and have him just stop doing them. However I think you made the wrong call in confronting your sister directly about it. She has a point: you aren't a parent and shouldn't be telling her how to handle things, even if you do so calmly and with the best intentions. The best thing to do is bring to her attention how stressed the kid is, ask the kid if he really wants all this, and then suggest that they really talk about it. If they want you to be further involved, by all means go for it, but if that's as far as they'll let you go, just leave it. It's between the parent and the child. At most I would just remind your nephew not to be afraid to voice concerns to his mom, because you're probably right in that he was afraid to be direct about it.

Again though, there is a difference in voicing concern and suggesting they talk it out and straight up telling her what is and isn't right for her son. THAT is why I think she got so pissed at you.

 

[Rawne1980]

I'm not American but I am a parent so i'll throw my thoughts in.

I've never pushed my kids. I WANT them to do well but I want them to want to do it themselves if that makes sense.

I could push and yell and scream until they did everything I wanted but that would make them miserable and I love my kids too much to do that to them. They do well at school and my step daughter is off to university this year doing Criminology and Forensic Science courses (she watches way too much CSI, she decided to be one) and I couldn't be more proud.

I did shit at school thus my 12 year venture in the army. But I did do a lot of courses when in the army to make up for my lack of qualifications.

As such I want my kids to do well so they can do whatever they wish with their lives career wise.

I could never push them into it. I can simply offer advice and help when they ask. This way I know that they will grow up doing what and being what they want to be and they will be happy, not what i've pushed them into doing/being and them growing up resenting me for it.

 

[Kolby Jack]

Also, the first step to ending this situation as smoothly as possible is to apologize to your sister. Once that is done, then you can ASK her if it's okay to make a suggestion or two. If she says it's okay, I'd suggest the things I mentioned above. Of course I am just a guy on the internet with a very small grasp of the whole situation, so it's up to you.