Looks like you're new here. Get all the fun of 52 Novels as it happens and subscribe by e-mail or subscribe using your favorite RSS feed reader. Might as well. Don't cost nothin.
Yesterday’s Sunday Denver Post featured a front-page story about the sagging attendance at the city’s middle schools.
It’s not what you might be thinking. The attendance problem isn’t because kids are skipping school. Nope. Instead, parents are sending their sixth graders elsewhere because they’re concerned about their children mixing with eighth graders.
From the story:
"You're afraid to let go of your baby," said Karla Loaiza, whose son, Raul, will be a sixth-grader at a K-6 school. "I don't think he's mature enough to go somewhere that has such big kids."
I mentioned the other day that I’m not a parent. In any case, I fail to see the logic here. Maybe it’s something I’m missing because I’m not a parent. Is there such a large jump in maturity between the average sixth grader and the average seventh grader?
Or is it because parents are being overprotective?
After all, this year’s seventh graders were last year’s sixth graders who went to school right alongside your, then, fifth grade kid. Never mind that this year’s eighth graders were with your kids in elementary school just a few years ago.
My wife did argue a good point as we were discussing this yesterday afternoon. She said, “Kids have more to deal with these days. It’s not like when we were in school.”
“I get that,” I said. “But it’s not like they don’t deal with some of the same things in grade schools. Those kids are bringing in weapons, too.”
“I wasn’t really talking about that, but that’s true. I was referring to pregnancies and drugs. I didn’t see my first pregnant girl until high school and it wasn’t because she wanted to have a baby.”
“Nice to go to school in the suburbs in the nineties, huh? There was a girl in my seventh grade class who got pregnant. I wouldn’t be surprised if some fifth or sixth grade kids know a girl their age who’s been knocked up.”
“Nice talk,” she said. She shot me a look that could have melted diamonds. then she thought about what I said for a moment. “Sadly, you’re probably right.”
This news story reminded me a little about something I read a few years ago on a discussion forum I used to frequent. A twenty-something guy who, on his first business trip, proceeded to get drunk, cause a scene and then vandalize the hotel where he and his co-workers were staying.
He had whooped it up after the group closed a big piece of business. Things were further complicated when hotel security tossed his room and found a stash of pot. Of course, the kid was arrested. The hotel already wanted that to happen after he trashed an elevator.
After he posted the long, fantastic details of the ordeal, the guy had the balls to be surprised that he was arrested—which was eclipsed only by the level of typehis shock at being fired the moment he returned to work.
So how are these two stories related? If I had to make a guess, I’d bet money that the guy above was raised by parents who spent a lot of time protecting him from anything and everything scary or that might possibly cause him harm in any way—whether to the physical body or to the spirit. Meanwhile, the kid thinks he lives in an artificial safe zone where actions have no consequences and he’s always above average.
I don’t think this—or the type of coddling that made the front page of the Sunday paper—is especially healthy for kids. Or for society as a whole, for that matter.
Then again, what do I know? I don’t have kids.
Tags: parent
Sphere: Related Content
{ 1 trackback }
{ 0 comments… add one now }