LMS thought it was just dandy when her DH hired someone to teach one of her kids how to run....

Awww, c'mon, its so fun to judge. Its practically a national pasttime! More entertaining than baseball and less fattening than apple pie! Plus its an easy way to feel good about yourself without having to make any effort to change or improve your own life!

OK what is a macrobiotic cupcake?

The writing thing might be legit. My daughter has some fine motor skills. She was identfied several years ago. It makes her writing very shaky and it is quite hard for her. She doesn't have a tutor but she does writing exercises at school. Her cousin has a similar problem and has an occupational therapist.

Never heard of anyone taking down a swing set. I think this whole heliocopter parenting is really just made up on blogs.

Well, they could have written an article on "under-parenting", but I'm guessing the seven uber-rich liberals who still subscribe to Time more likely fit the opposite extreme that they ended up covering.

It's easy to get caught up in it all when all you want is the best for your kids. The difficultly for many is deciding for themselves or letting someone else decide. I think it is particularly difficult here where we have access to so many services and options (i.e. a blocked tear duct in a newborn rates an automatic referral to a pediatric eye surgeon for evaluation).

"It's easy to get caught up in it all when all you want is the best for your kids"...and you have no confidence or sense of self-worth...

Fixed it for ya...

Reminds me of a meeting I had with DD pre-K teacher. She was concerned because DD did not cut out pictures along the dotted lines; DD just cut around the pictures, leaving a lot of white space. Teacher was concerned and suggested that DD needed "remedial scissors-cutting practice" since she was going to a private school Kindergarten and it had higher standards. I asked DD why she wasn't cutting along the dotted lines. Her reply, "I just want to get it over with. Don't you know what the picture is?" Enough said. No remedial scissors practice needed.

"Under-parenting" - neglect, abuse, etc. is definitely a big challenge facing many children - especially the ones who end up getting in trouble, failing out of school, etc.

Time should back off parents who are trying to do a good job raising their children. Even if these ridiculous examples are occuring - what is the harm?

And, having suffered from severe skin rashes as a child, I probably would have loved hyopallergenic socks. Instead of having to freeze during the cold D.C. winter since socks irritated my skin. So again, why is Time being so pretentious and attacking parents who are trying? Why not focus on all the parents who don't even bother to raise their children or pay child support?

"macrobiotic cupcakes" are just cupcakes made with a whole grain flour (e.g., brown rice flour), rather than with fine-milled, processed cake flour. (Okay, and you don't add a bunch of artificial colors/flavors, but it's the grains that make them 'macrobiotic.') No, I don't make them, but it's not a big deal.

A "tutor" to help with the pencil holding? No, one would employ an occupational therapist to work in the development of fine and/or gross motor skills, should there be a need. School systems provide occupational therapists to students who need them, under FAPE, and you can also hire them privately if needed.(Certified occupational therapists have at least a Bachelor's degree; it's more and more common for a Master's degree to be required.)

Preschool Mandarin? Yep. Even some public school districts. See http://www.smfc.k12.ca.us/level2/Preschool/mandarin.html

(I've got a BIL who lives in San Mateo, which is how I knew about this. No, their kids weren't in it.)

Hypoallergenic socks? Sure, look it up - socks made from alpaca, or whatever. If your kids are allergic, for example.

I think 06902 got it pretty much right. Taken individually, each of these things exists for a reason. And anytime you have a "commercial" product there will be a lot of marketing about why you should buy it. The key is to decide what's appropriate for YOUR family and not let your lack of confidence or your sense of self-worth drive you into doing things that aren't needed or are even counter-productive.

Just read the Time article, and it's freakin' hilarious. My favorite part:

"The revolutionary leaders are careful about offering too much advice. Parents have gotten plenty of that, and one of the goals of this new movement is to give parents permission to disagree or at least follow different roads."

Followed a mere paragraph later by this:

"Kim John Payne, author of Simplicity Parenting, teaches seminars on how to peel back the layers of cultural pressure that weigh down families. He and his coaches will even go into your home, weed out your kids' stuff, sort out their schedule, turn off the screens and help your family find space you didn't know you had, like a master closet reorganizer for the soul."

Because nothing says "hey man, whatever you do is fine. There's no one answer." than someone who will come into your home and decide which toys your kids should have and what activities they should be doing.

I'll admit I'm very tired of hearing and reading over and over again how we're all overinvolved jerks who are smothering our kids. It's especially galling in parenting magazines, where an article like the Time piece is inevitably surrounded by articles designed to scare parents into believing that their homes are minefields of danger, their kids are obese or one handful of goldfish from becoming so, and that their next-door neighbor is a molester.

So, well, interesting. AB: fine answers, all of them.

Each of the elementary schools in Atlanta (the public ones, at least) has a language associated with it. Ours is spanish - but there are more than one that have mandarin - they may not start til first grade, but um...

And, an OT has recommended to us that my kid needs help. We took him cause his handwriting isn't so good - and well, the teacher recommended it. So it's NOT about handwriting and fine motor skills, it's about other stuff.

I cook with whole wheat flour whenever I can - it's just healthier. It sounds much more exotic than it is.

You know, the problem with these sorts of pieces is that they add a bunch of disparate things together to show how horribly people are overparenting, when the reality is most families only do one or two things that they really need.

I don't know any kid who is in pre-K Mandarin, wears hypoallergenic socks, and eats macrobiotic cupcakes. I do know one kid with severe nut and other food allergies; his mom is pretty vigilant in watching what he eats, so, you know, he doesn't die (picky, picky, right?). I had a friend whose doctor ordered her to wear a helmet because she had a medical condition that caused her to pass out unexpectedly. Guess worrying about a concussion was just silly and overprotective. My own DD was just diagnosed with ADHD; I've spent a lot more time and effort supervising homework and interacting with teachers than I EVER expected -- not because I want to micromanage her school career (gah), but because the other alternative is for her to decide she's stupid and a failure and turn off school entirely at 8 yrs old.

Thing is, people who have kids with actual "issues" are usually too busy figuring out how to deal with those issues to worry about other coulda/woulda/shouldas. Peanut mom doesn't have lot of extra time and mental energy to worry about Mandarin lessons, ya know? And Lord knows I don't have enough brain cells left to worry about hypoallergenic socks.

I think a lot of it is that we are much more aware of things than we used to be. For example, we took our son to a "pencil holding tutor" although it was really called "occupational therapy" because he was having problems with his fine motor development. The biggest symptom of this was extremely poor handwriting, so it would be easy to spin it that way.

Allergies are a great example. I have a friend who is allergic to cats and he didn't figure it out until he was 20. His family always had cats when he was growing up and his parents just figured he was a sickly child, it never occurred to them it might an allergy.

I do think there are some parents who do go overboard on things. The ones that really bother me are in sports where they don't keep score (the kids are all keeping score and know who won) and give everyone a trophy just for participating, because we can't hurt anyone's self-esteem by not giving them a trophy.

I'm disappointed this article was so extreme, because I still think there are a lot of assumptions about what parents "should" do for their kids that has no benefit for most kids or even a negative impact. It also undermines its point by referring to fairly normal, beneficial things (a second language in preschool--the horror!) along with the craziness.

For example, I would have liked an article that explored how different kids responded to different levels of parental involvement. Do parents who attend every last recital and soccer game create kids who are more dependent, more trusting of their parents, both, or neither? Do those parents really know more about their kids lives or do the kids just work harder to keep part of their life private? Do those kids have more trouble starting their own lives as adults, are they better partners because they learned how to be there for family, are they more or less likely to get divorced? And most importantly, are there certain traits in individuals that would make "over-parenting" more or less beneficial to a kid?

But I guess it's easier to point to a couple of people walking their hypoallergenic kids on leashes and laugh.

Oh, and the reason we don't talk about underparenting as much is that the checked-out parents aren't exactly looking for parenting advice. "Hmm, Time says I shouldn't leave my kid alone in the car while I work my shift. If that's what the experts are saying these days, I'll take him to a licensed day care center right away."

Umm...I attended a Mandarin pre-K at a Chinese School attended mainly by - you guessed it - Chinese people! The school was also organized and staffed by Chinese-born parents who wanted their children to learn the mother tongue.

Context, people, context

"I'll admit I'm very tired of hearing and reading over and over again how we're all overinvolved jerks who are smothering our kids."

On the contrary for me, articles like this have a way of making us slacker parents like myself feel better. Not that I have anything against uber parents or the seemingly trivial items/coaches/therapy/educational opportunities they spen their money on for their kid's development, I'm just not cut out for that kind of parenting detail.

For example, I would have liked an article that explored how different kids responded to different levels of parental involvement. Do parents who attend every last recital and soccer game create kids who are more dependent, more trusting of their parents, both, or neither? Do those parents really know more about their kids lives or do the kids just work harder to keep part of their life private? Do those kids have more trouble starting their own lives as adults, are they better partners because they learned how to be there for family, are they more or less likely to get divorced? And most importantly, are there certain traits in individuals that would make "over-parenting" more or less beneficial to a kid?

But I guess it's easier to point to a couple of people walking their hypoallergenic kids on leashes and laugh.

Posted by: hbc1

Agree. I always wonder if I want to be more involved in my child's school than my parents were or if it was helpful that I had to figure things out on my own. I remember some parents who seemed to live at the school.

What is the rational for those leash things some parents put on their kids? I was surprised how popular they are last time we went to Disney.

So, umm, my household is tri-lingual so the children are tri-lingual from the start. The two biggest, and possibly the youngest have inherited dermatitis from both their dad and my mom, so no question, we use cottons and no synthetics as far as possibly in their clothes and fragrance-free bath products.
I bake at home, only way to get real bread ;) so I bake rye-bread, mixed rye and wheat, wholegrain, with oats, you name it. It has more flavour that way, even pancakes improve with a touch of powdered oats. But admittedly, my cakes a plain.

No leashes, though, no excessive protection gear, no pencil-holding tutorials, etc.

Enough said, I'm basically repeating others. Many things have a good reason in special circumstances, some are smart in all circumstances, and a few are off point in almost all circumstances.
-but child neglect is way more of a problem, I think.

What's the harm in being over-involved? You cripple your children so that they can't function independently. They don't have the opportunity to learn from their mistakes and find out that yes, their decisions and actions have natural consequences.

I think we really need to suppress our impulses to shield our kids from all of life's winds. Yes, we should take care of them. But being responsible parents also means that we gradually kick them out of the nest and teach them to fly. To do otherwise is a disservice to them.

What is the rational for those leash things some parents put on their kids? I was surprised how popular they are last time we went to Disney.

Posted by: sunflower571 | November 23, 2009 11:20 AM | Report abuse

Leashes (tethers) for kids were also popular in ancient times.

"What is the rational for those leash things some parents put on their kids? I was surprised how popular they are last time we went to Disney."

They let you "keep an eye on your child" rather than "watch your child." (For us old fogies, the comedian Gallagher used to have a hilarious routine about the difference between "watching" and "keeping an eye on." Basically, his child dashed on to an elevator full of people just as the door was closing, and off he went. If he'd been "watching" his child like his wife had told him to, that wouldn't have happened; but he was just "keeping an eye on" his child.)

End of ramble - those leashes make sure you can drag your kid back when he sees something shiny and does a runner in a crowd. To me? Ludicrous; offensive. To some people, it gives theme peace of mind.

This generation of parents should be proud of themselves. The other side of the coin are the parents in the past who were so self involved that parenting their kids never entered their minds. Men at the office all the time, golfing on the weekends, women worried about their problems and kids getting the short stick. Now people are realizing that family trumps all else. get lost Time magazine, with your fake examples!

Basically, his child dashed on to an elevator full of people just as the door was closing, and off he went. If he'd been "watching" his child like his wife had told him to, that wouldn't have happened; but he was just "keeping an eye on" his child.

Posted by: ArmyBrat1 | November 23, 2009 11:49 AM | Report abuse

How does anyone know what would or would not have happened?

Re: the original article - a "wired treehouse" would truly be the height of absurdity. No need to run cables, power, etc. out there. Just use a more powerful wireless access point. The kids are too old for treehouses now, but I make sure I can work from anywhere on my property - if it's a nice day I want to be able to sit outside and still get work done.

"How does anyone know what would or would not have happened?"

Umm... because it's a comedy routine, and he said so?

I agree with others, parent bashing that seems to never get old for people, from one angle or another, and most of it is worthless. And of course you can't win - if you let your kids out alone, someone will be sure to tell you what a terrible, neglectful parent you are for exposing them to potential dangers; and if you don't, someone will be sure to tell you what a terrible, overprotective parent you are for not letting them confront the world on their own. You can't win with the critics, it's no use trying, and of course the idea that kids are different and the best parenting approach is going to vary depending on the individual child would just take all the fun out of it.

I remember when our son developed eczema on his cheeks at about a year old. It was pretty awful looking, and so we tried to figure out what it was, and eventually figured out that it was a wheat allergy. So we cut out wheat. But what fascinated me was the responses from others who mentioned it when we were out - so many people seemed surprised that I would go to the trouble to try to figure out the cause, which seemed so weird to me. Why wouldn't I? I recognize that worrying about getting rid of eczema instead of worrying about starving or dying of a host of childhood diseases is a luxury, but since we do have that luxury, why wouldn't I take advantage of it?

IME people who adhere extremely strongly to any parenting philosophy are fairly unpleasant to be around and best avoided. I know plenty of these "free range" parents who really just use it as an excuse to be lazy, like the mother who feels that "kids should be left to work out their own problems," while her FOUR YEAR OLD still bites other kids and her 6-year old is sent home from school for hitting. But her "phiosophy" gets her out of having to actually confront her kids' lack of social skills, which would cut into the time she spends chatting with her friends while her kids run amok.

Seems like this overparenting/underparenting thing starts when you are pregnant. I already have encountered people who think I am too fussy ("throw away the pregnancy books-I ate lunch meat/peanutbutter/occasionally had a glass of wine and my baby turned out fine") versus those who treat you like an invalid (isn't your computer bag too heavy? aren't you working too many hours-are you getting enough rest? what brand of prenatals do you take?". I guess this is an example of you have to learn as much you can then ultimately do what feels right to you.

Wow floof. I didn't know it was possible to teach a 4 year old not to bite. All my kids were biters and my wife tried everything to get them to stop, including biting them back.

Of course, my wife said that it was my fault for not doing anything about it other than to remind them not to bite and showing them how much it hurt the other kid. Then I reminded her that "doing something about it" didn't work either.

Re leashes, my sister-in-law used one one her middle kid - never needed it with the oldest or youngest. But the middle kid could disappear in the blink of an eye. She started leashing him after having to lock down a department store...

Confession time - I try really really hard not to over parent and most of the time I do OK. I have to try so hard because I really am type A, detail oriented, organized, etc. (I am finished with my Christmas shopping and my gifts are all wrapped...I know, I KNOW!) So, when the little guy started to crawl, I saw those knee pads and I thought, How nice, let's get them. My husband brought me back to reality pdq (as in "eff no! Get a grip!). :)

And, floof said "amok!" I love that word. hehe!

LOL, that reminds me of when my son when through a stage of biting while nursing when he was about 8 months old. It hurt like the dickens and it was really hard to get him to stop. Once, he did it in front my SIL and I said how frustrating it was, and she said, in a really condescending voice, "Have you tried saying 'no'?"

About six months later, her daughter went through the same phase, and it took all my self-restraint to not parrot that right back to her!

Wacky, All 4 of your kids were biters? Do werewolf or vampire blood lines run in your family? I am kidding (of course) but 4/4 is rough. Neither of my kids bit anyone, they beat up on each other, but that's about it.

I've seen it all when it comes to parenting styles, suffice it to say we weeded out the annoying extremes as far as friends go. I think everyone gravitates towards friends that have similar parenting styles, and the kids get along so much better because they have all been raised with similar rules and boundaries. It just makes it easier, particularly when they start getting older and kids are over each other's houses all the time.

(I am finished with my Christmas shopping and my gifts are all wrapped...I know, I KNOW!
ValGal

Good for you!! Power to the organized people!

Whacky, I think lots of kids go through a biting phase, but 4 is really too old for that. Especially since this woman's response to the kid's biting is basically to laugh at how awful her kids are and then do nothing, so at the park and whatnot all the other mothers have to watch this woman's kids so their own kids don't get smacked or bit or hit with a stick. At the very least if you've got a biter you don't just let them run around biting all the other kids while you sit and chat with your friends and then shrug your shoulders... it isn't fair to the other children.

I'm pretty sure that if even one time this child had had to leave the park or a playdate early because she chomped on someone she might have given the behavior a second thought. But since her mom didn't much care, why should she stop doing it?

LizaBean - what did you do to discover the cause of your little one's eczema? My 7 month old has small spots on her arms and legs, on and off. And it started when she was just on formula. I flat out refuse to put her on soy formula, due to all the dangers of high soy intake. And she's eating more and more food now, (and less formula). But if I go a few days without using the aquafor, the spots come back. (And I already use a hypoallergenic laundry detergent because I get hives from some of the dyes and perfumes.) Did you do an elimination diet, go for allergy testing? something else?

I should explain... I'm pretty much a live-and-let live kind of parent, but I don't have any tolerance for parents who let their kids physically injure other children because they don't want to get off their rear ends. I think we've all been in the situation of having a kid who is a hitter/biter/hair puller, and while that's going on you just have to watch your kid really closely and intervene when you see it coming.

At some point this little girl is going to bite the wrong kid and then the lesson will be learned when either the other kid or his parent slugs her in the teeth or picks her up and spanks her. Not really the nicest way for a kid to learn a lesson, but if you are going to insist on parenting via the law of the jungle, that's the kind of thing you have to expect.

floof,

What have you taught your kid to do if this litle girl does hit or bite your kid? Like if they your kid hit or bites back is that good that they are defending themselves or bad?

sunflower, I rarely see this family anymore for various reasons. But fortunately my daughter is significantly larger than this little girl so she never tried to bite her (she seems mostly to go after kids who are smaller than she is).

I suppose I should talk to her about this kind of thing, but to be honest I have never encountered another child this age who still bites.

My daughter's normal way of dealing with other kids who are behaving badly toward her is to retaliate verbally and Very Loudly (as in, loud enough to embarass the other kid and get the attention of any adult reasonably nearby). I think that's probably a good way to go for now at least.

JHBVA - sorry you're struggling with the eczema too! My son's showed up when he was about a year old, and so after we figured out it could be food allergies we just tried cutting out different allergenic foods that we knew he had recently started. He took to solids pretty slowly so it wasn't hard, we didn't do a full on elimintation diet, just tried the most common causes first. It started to clear very quickly after we stopped giving him wheat, and once I stopped eating wheat (we were still nursing) it went away completely. After about a year of eating wheat-free someone recommended acupressure to treat the allergy, so we tried that and it worked. We lucked out that it was fairly easily found and treated in our case. Good luck, I hope you find a cause soon - I know it's no fun!

My DD has eczema which flairs up as the temperature gets colder. I am starting to check for it and I have asked her at age 8 to tell me if she starts itching her back of her knees.

I am trying to not get involved in DD's smaller decisions. She had lice last week and had her hair cut. She did recover but it took a while. I was more worried about swine flu (she has had a shot but I haven't).

I never had eczema (I have very oily skin) or lice so I have had lots of opportunities to learn.

One thing about eczema- two of my kids have it and they always get horrible flare-ups right before they get sick. It's like their immune system is getting geared up and the skin gets bad in response. According to our ped this is pretty common- took us a long time to figure out what was going on with my oldest, though, since she would break out and I would spend 2 or 3 days trying to figure out what she could be reacting to, and then she'd be sick.

Well floof, my kids bit until 4 or 5, maybe 6, but they only bit family and friends that they liked. It wasn't to be mean or even in self defense, but it was more of an extreme expression of affection. My youngest would often run down the driveway when he saw me coming home from work, give me a hug, then put his teeth on my hand or arm and chomp down. I could tell he wanted to chomp harder as I could feel him tighten his jaw, but hold back on the force of the bite itself so it wouldn't hurt me. A few seconds of this with a little shaking and the biting urge would subside. I can understand this behavior since I get satisfaction out of doing the same thing to my wife. I guess it runs in the family.

Punish the kid for doing this? No way!

whacky, that's a little different from what I'm describing! We have the same problem with one of my toddlers. Fortunately, she only bites me (and, on rare occasions, her twin brother).

I'm talking about kids who bite random children hard enough to break the skin. Different kettle of fish.

Wow, floof, that's interesting about the eczema flaring up before getting sick! What a bummer, though - it's like insult to injury. My son does still have sensitive skin and gets little rashes when it gets drier in the winter, but luckily for us the eczema was short lived. I know a lot of times they can't find a cause and it's just one of those things.

Whacky, funny, I had forgotten but my kiddo used to occassionaly bite in fits of excitement too when he was in the 3 year range. I remember it being so jarring when you're having a nice happy cuddle or hug and then suddenly, OUCH!

Regarding leashes, I had to use one on my older daughter and we were in a place where there weren't shopping carts (like a Borders store, for instance). When she was 2, she HATED being in her stroller, and it was a pain to take that thing everywhere when most places had shopping carts. It's a lot easier than trying to chase a kid around who moves like greased lightning, and it teaches them limits. Haven't had to use it on the younger one yet, but then again we tend to avoid places that don't have carts anyway. She likes the lightweight "umbrella" stroller better anyway, and that's a lot more portable!

Today's winner for the coveted Poster of the Day award goes to anne23 for her tale of DD who refused to cut along the lines.

If a teenager's perspective means anything, overparenting isn't just going for all the overboard products. The overparenting that has caused the most problems for kids I know at school involves parents not being willing to accept that their particular kids won't always be the best in everything they do.

One of my friends ended up in a professional counselor's office because her dad couldn't accept the fact that she was really struggling to get an A in an advanced chemistry class. HIS daughter clearly ought to be able to get the highest grade in the class, and she couldn't deal with not meeting his absurd expectations. Other kids are scared to have a B in any class at any point because their parents will ground them until they get their grades up if they do. Parents like that often use online grade checking tools to constantly keep tabs on their kids.

You can find many kids in sports, music, clubs, and even volunteering groups who are doing too much and trying too hard to achieve things they would be fine not achieving because their parents want them to be the best in everything. Many are being asked to hold a 4.0 in challenging classes, work part-time, be part of clubs, participate in extra-curriculars, and play an instrument at the same time.

This is compromising their mental, emotional, and physical health because the demands placed on them are too much and too unrealistic. Overparenting is rampant in that sense of the word, especially among high-achieving teenagers, and it's not something to joke about. It's a serious issue facing many of my peers. They don't want to disappoint their parents, but they can't meet their expectations while getting enough sleep and taking care of themselves.

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