Navigating the Crazy

As the boys get older and broaden their horizons, it is harder and harder for me to avoid the crazy side of parenting. The thing is, there are a lot of parents who are just plain nuts. Their children have become their life's work, their masterpiece, instead of you know, just kids who are their own beings, trying to discover who they are in the context of the larger world.

Instead of kids who just play baseball or soccer at age 7, they play on select teams and travel teams and have private coaches to keep them ahead of the game. There are kids who have private tutors to get them (and keep them) in the gifted and talented program. There are kids who after a full summer day of swim team and tennis team (in which they are the stars at both because they practice every day all year long), they return home to their summer tutor in science and mandarin. (Yes. Mandarin.)

Kids are expected to specialize in todays world at a very young age. Seasonal sports in which you enjoy learning new activities and new things about yourself are not in vogue. Instead, you have year round devotees to whatever sport (or in many cases sports) each child has "selected" (parent picked for them) and parents who commit to private coaching and practice sessions multiple times a week. Parents are already discussing college scholarships at tee-ball games.

These same parents are obsessive about their kids' school performance and are convinced that every single thing their child does is special or spectacular or just plain genius. I have heard things said to teachers or written to principals that have made me wince in embarrassment for the parent, but to my shock, the parents aren't embarrassed. They are convinced that their child should be treated differently, should be above the rules and should be given special accolades. I have even heard from two different sets of parents that they think their "gifted" child should be given services before those offered to children who have been labeled as developmentally or physically delayed because isn't being unbelievably smart just as much a special status? I mean, their child is going to change the world someday. The first time a parent actually said this to me, I laughed because I thought they were joking. (They weren't.)

I am not exaggerating, not even the littlest bit. If anything, I have even more examples of this insanity that would make any sane person's head spin off their head.

How do you raise a child in this world? There comes a time when you are surrounded on all sides by this crazy and you start to wonder if I may be the crazy one for not subscribing to this parenting style.

It has made me take some time to think, really consider, what I want for my children. I want them to be good people, with kind hearts. I want them to be well-mannered and thoughtful. I want them to see the joy in the everyday. I want them to experience failure, but to be resilient enough to overcome lives' challenges. I want them to be happy people who do some good in the world.

Yes, I want them to do their best at school and to develop an intellectual curiosity, but I will not be hiring a tutor anytime soon to teach them mandarin on the hopes it will increase their chances to getting into an ivy league school. I didn't have children so I could get a bumper sticker from Harvard.