Stealing From Our Children

As life expectancy in the United States continues to go up (according to the Center for Disease Control, an average baby born in the USA in 2006 can expect to live to the age of 77.7 years) the time we actually allow our children to be children seems to be diminishing. We are stealing childhood from our children.

Our society pushes young children into academics, organized sports, and a all kinds of regimented activities at earlier and earlier ages. We are over scheduling our children’s lives. We are testing them too often in ways that are frequently  inappropriate. We are allowing them to spend too much time in front of computers and televisions (1 in 4 children under the age of 2 has a television in their bedroom and the numbers just go up from there). We are feeding them mountains of empty calories that leaves them unhealthy and fat.

Then we are taking recess away from those already unhealthy and fat kids—and cutting out physical education classes, music classes, and art classes.

Our national desire to leave no child behind is leaving all kinds of children behind. Teachers are cheating on standardized tests, education and learning are taking a back seat to test preparation, and curriculums are being pushed down so that in many places kindergartners are expected to show up for their first day of school knowing things they did not learn until first grade a few decades ago.

We are expecting three year olds to behave and think like five year olds. We are expecting five year olds to think and behave like ten year olds. Marketers and popular culture are sexualizing younger and younger children; it is simply wrong for pre-pubescent girls to dress, act, and be looked at as sex objects.

All these things work together to leave our children stressed, pressured, anxious, and hyper.

Then we drug them to settle them down, perk them up, or make them more manageable. We end up treating symptoms instead of causes, symptoms we caused in the first place.

My childhood wasn’t perfect, I don’t think anyone’s was, but it sure was a heck of a lot of fun. I had a bucket of Hot Wheel and Matchbox cars, a rusting pile of yellow Tonka vehicles, older and younger neighborhood friends eager to explore the world, parents who let me be a kid, and all the time in the world. My summers, weekends, and evenings were full of tag, kickball, games of war, skateboards, dirt, lightning bugs, stray dogs, cinderblock-and-plywood bike ramps, jumps from garage roofs, and the occasional popsicle.

We were allowed and expected to solve our own problems. That meant there were arguments, disagreements, fights, bloodied noses, and apologies. If we could not solve our own problems, a neighborhood adult would appear out of nowhere and help straighten things out.

We came in when the streetlights came on and left filthy rings around the bathtub. We imagined and dreamt and figured out how to entertain ourselves when we thought we were bored—and that lead to adventures and dumb mistakes and learning.

I got to be a kid and it was awesome.

Not only are we stealing childhood from our children, we are now swiping their future. George Bush and the Republicans were anything but financially conservative while in power and it looks like Barak Obama and the Democrats are quickly outspending them. Many families, cities, and states are in self-created and dire financial situations. We are racking up incomprehensible national debt and deficit.  Our children (and grandchildren) will be stuck paying for it all.

Is stealing their childhood really preparing them physically, emotionally, spiritually, and cognitively for the hard work of paying for our bad choices and financial transgressions? If our debt and deficit are going to weigh them down as adults in a few decades, shouldn't we at least let them enjoy being children now? Can’t we let them have a little fun in their 77.7 years?

I’m not blaming anyone. I’m blaming all of us. Whether you are politically and socially from the Left, Center, or Right you played a part. The choices that lead us to this place were all logical choices. We thought we were doing the right thing. We gathered lots and lots of information. We thought, and thought, and thought some more. Then we made what we felt were the best decisions based on all our information and thinking.

All this thinking and logic are part of the problem. In his book How We Decide, Jonah Lehrer explains that when making big decisions we need  to rely on our emotional mind, our gut, our instinct. We need to trust the twinge we feel in the back of our head or deep in our gut. Lehrer writes, “The reason these emotions are so intelligent is that they’ve managed to turn mistakes into educational events. Your are constantly benefiting from experience, even if you’re not consciously aware of the benefits.”

We need to learn from our mistakes and start making better choices using our emotional brain. You know in your gut that recess, and free time, and child-directed learning, and play, and goofiness are good for kids. Now, just trust your gut and act, plan, and choose accordingly.