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ITS NOT EASY BEING A KID Today many parents major concern is that their children stay ahead of the pack, and keep an edge over the competition. There are children enrolled on waiting lists at nursery schools while still in their mothers wombs. For the same reason, schools are filled with children in enriched and accelerated programs. And children are being started in competitive sports like swimming and tennis at a very early age. Of course, there is nothing wrong with wanting children to live up to their potential. It is the excessive pressure that some parents put on their children to succeed academically and socially that can cause problems in the families which can lead to rebellious behaviour, teen pregnancy, teenage suicide and many other serious issues (Elkind, 1988).
Most often during the middle childhood years, children feel pressures from a number of sources. They may feel pressured from within themselves, from parents, from teachers and peers and from society. The pressure for early academic achievement is but one of many contemporary pressures on children to grow up fast. Many parents are putting tremendous pressure on children to perform at ever earlier ages. The pressure culminates at the high school level (Schor, 74). Teenagers are pressured not only to get good grades but to get in to as many advanced and enriched level classes as possible whether they are suited to this level of pressure or not.
Tutoring centres are springing up everywhere, catering to those who want their children to have that edge. According to David Elkind (1988), by deciding what and when children should learn, we rob them out of the opportunity to take the initiative, to take responsibility for their mistakes and credit their achievements. Such practices run the risk of producing children who are dependent and lacking self-esteem. Parents need to recognize that what learners need most is to experience opportunities to explore, to investigate their questions and ideas.
When children are pressured to do well academically and socially, they feel that they have to accomplish something, to please their parents. But when this goal of accomplishment has not been succeeded, they see themselves as failures or big disappointments. They feel that they have to live up to their parents expectations so they will be proud of them, therefore, this can lead to low self-esteem. Parents dont mean their children any harm, they just want their child to reach their full potential and succeed in life. But parents need to understand that children may have a different perception of hurrying than from their own. How children perceive hurrying determines its effects as much as the act of hurrying itself (Elkind, 188).
Young people tend to perceive hurrying as a rejection, as evidence that parents do not really care about them (Elkind, 131). Achievement overload often occurs because the child has misread the parents support of achievement. When young people assume that parents are concerned only with how well they do, rather than with who they are, the need to achieve becomes addictive. When children feel that achievement is for the parent, not for the self, they either eventually give up or go into achievement overload to assure continuation of parental support. Children find such rejection very threatening and often develop stress symptoms as a result and can lead to problems within the family (Elkind, 189).
The overwhelming pressures and the thought of rejection can seriously affect the childs physical or psychological well being. According to David Elkind, (1988), Hurried children seem to make up a large portion of the troubled children seen by clinicians today; they constitute many of the young people experiencing school failure, those involved in delinquency and drugs, and those who are committing suicide. They also include many of the children who have chronic psychosomatic complaints such as headaches and stomachaches, who are chronically unhappy, hyperactive, or lethargic and unmotivated. These diseases and problems have long been recognized as stress-related in adults, and it is time we look at children and stress under the same light. When a child experience too many pressures, or the stressors are too intense, the child may become overloaded, therefore, children must respond to these pressures. Children typically welcome some events, while there are more difficult for them to take on (Schor, 68).
Young school-age children will sometimes express their feelings directly. Some children show it through sadness, depression, or withdrawal (Schor, 73). Other children may express feelings of stress outwardly and begin to misbehave (Schor, 75). When children are stressed the childs grades begin to fall, the child appears depressed, seems restless, tired and agitated, develop eating problems, and the child exhibits antisocial behaviour, such as lying and stealing, forgets or refuses to do chores, and seems more dependent on the parent than in the past (Schor, 76). These are some of the effects that stress may have on a child but there are more signs of behaviour that have a negative impact on a child. Whether parents are hurrying their children from a baby sitter to nursery school, or to do well on tests, parents are putting children under stress.
While no one of these demands may overstress a child, the more hurrying demands are made on a child, the more likely it will be that the child be overstressed. There is a great danger that over-achieving parents-both those with children in school and those who are fostering learning at home- can become too intrusive in their childrens lives. Although the pressures to get things done more quickly and efficiently has positive benefits- it has its drawbacks, such a producing impatience. It is important that parents allow their children to learn at their own pace to avoid the feeling of pressure. When children feel pressured, they have to cope with it and this is mostly shown in their behaviour and as a result through their behaviour, problems tend to arise in the home. The reactions of young children to hurrying is that they tend to blame themselves and the world, and adolescents tend to blame their parents (Elkind, 84).
Adolescents blame their parents not only for hurrying them as adolescents but also for hurrying them as a child. While school-age children rationalize parental hurrying, they dont forget it. In effect, adolescents pay their parents back in the teen years for all the sin, that they committed against them when they were children (Elkind, 84). Parents need to allow their children to grow, to learn and develop. Learning is, after all, a process of figuring things out, making connections, getting ideas and testing them, taking risks, making mistakes, and trying again. Hurrying children through learning seems to be beneficial but parents need to recognize the consequences that may arise in their adolescent years.
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