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quietannThis is not meant as criticism of any one or more people specifically! It's just based on *generalizations* about various kinds of parenting.
So this has been bugging me since a conversation I had with my brother when I went to San Diego. Alan teaches English and literacy skills in a low-income, 97% non-white grades 7-12 school there. Eighty percent of the kids are eligible for free lunches. It's *very* rough, though he loves the kids (and hates the administrators who treat teachers -- who nearly all have masters' degrees -- like they don't know what they are doing...)
So we were talking about how much parents in the Northeast push their kids -- affluent parents, anyway (as he pointed out) -- and I asked him, "So, what do kids from a poor neighborhood in San Diego do for extra-curricular activities?" After all, the parents around me seem to be stuffing their kids' every hour with sports, clubs, tutoring in special areas, volunteer work, etc.
After Alan stopped laughing at me (cynically -- because he knew I'd deliberately asked him a loaded question), he said, "for the most part, nothing." Some of the girls are involved in dance teams or choruses -- usually sponsored by a church -- and the younger kids often attend free after-school programs run by various volunteer organizations. Some of the boys do sports, but very few are on organized teams because of the cost. The kids who are old enough sometimes have part-time jobs. In any case, the motivation to do anything besides "hang out" has to come from the individual kids, because their parents or guardians (about half do not live with either parent) are too busy/f*cked up/chaotic/poor to support them in these activities.
The contrast is pretty strong to me. I'd also been exploring www.flylady.com, and one of her suggestions for keeping a well-organized, happy family is putting a limit on how many extra-curriculars each child can be involved in. (She suggests one sport and one youth group/church group/etc. but acknowledges that individual kids have different wants and skills.) Now this gave me an idea -- what if parents who followed her advice took some or all of the money they save by cutting back on extracurriculars and donated it to extracurriculars for kids whose families can't afford the cost? I wonder if any of the parents I know would do that, or if there is just too much pressure to keep up with other parents (or -- and this seems more likely, especially with older kids -- that the parents are so afraid of what will happen if their kids have any unscheduled time.)
Here's the personal bit: in a way, our parents were more like inner-city parents in that they didn't pressure us to engage in extracurriculars; they let us choose our own, as we wanted to. If anything, I had to push them to let me get involved (because usually if I got involved in something, they knew it would require an investment of time and money on their part. Unlike inner-city parents, they had the resources, but they didn't want to "waste" them on things I wasn't serious about.) This is how I got into raising guinea pigs, and horseback riding, and crafty things. The only thing they pressued me into was violin lessons, and eventually I became motivated to do that on my own, but not because I had any musical talent; I was friends with the violin teacher's daughter. I had plenty to do, but also plenty of unscheduled time to play, or ride my bike, or whatever. My brother was a very talented athlete, and they encouraged that -- but with firm boundaries of one sport at a time (he played soccer in the fall and baseball in the spring, usually, and eventually became a very good lacrosse player), plus Boy Scouts if he wanted to do it.
Our parents were well-educated and had high aspirations for us, but they didn't see the need to enforce a lot of "resume building" activities on children. We had dinner as a family 6 nights out of 7, which in my opinion was much more valuable than anything I might have picked up from more extracurriculars. And Alan and I both turned out fine (eventually); we both have good jobs and advanced degrees and rich, full lives. (Alan lacks a spouse, which he really wants, but he is working on that :)
comments welcome, as usual...
So this has been bugging me since a conversation I had with my brother when I went to San Diego. Alan teaches English and literacy skills in a low-income, 97% non-white grades 7-12 school there. Eighty percent of the kids are eligible for free lunches. It's *very* rough, though he loves the kids (and hates the administrators who treat teachers -- who nearly all have masters' degrees -- like they don't know what they are doing...)
So we were talking about how much parents in the Northeast push their kids -- affluent parents, anyway (as he pointed out) -- and I asked him, "So, what do kids from a poor neighborhood in San Diego do for extra-curricular activities?" After all, the parents around me seem to be stuffing their kids' every hour with sports, clubs, tutoring in special areas, volunteer work, etc.
After Alan stopped laughing at me (cynically -- because he knew I'd deliberately asked him a loaded question), he said, "for the most part, nothing." Some of the girls are involved in dance teams or choruses -- usually sponsored by a church -- and the younger kids often attend free after-school programs run by various volunteer organizations. Some of the boys do sports, but very few are on organized teams because of the cost. The kids who are old enough sometimes have part-time jobs. In any case, the motivation to do anything besides "hang out" has to come from the individual kids, because their parents or guardians (about half do not live with either parent) are too busy/f*cked up/chaotic/poor to support them in these activities.
The contrast is pretty strong to me. I'd also been exploring www.flylady.com, and one of her suggestions for keeping a well-organized, happy family is putting a limit on how many extra-curriculars each child can be involved in. (She suggests one sport and one youth group/church group/etc. but acknowledges that individual kids have different wants and skills.) Now this gave me an idea -- what if parents who followed her advice took some or all of the money they save by cutting back on extracurriculars and donated it to extracurriculars for kids whose families can't afford the cost? I wonder if any of the parents I know would do that, or if there is just too much pressure to keep up with other parents (or -- and this seems more likely, especially with older kids -- that the parents are so afraid of what will happen if their kids have any unscheduled time.)
Here's the personal bit: in a way, our parents were more like inner-city parents in that they didn't pressure us to engage in extracurriculars; they let us choose our own, as we wanted to. If anything, I had to push them to let me get involved (because usually if I got involved in something, they knew it would require an investment of time and money on their part. Unlike inner-city parents, they had the resources, but they didn't want to "waste" them on things I wasn't serious about.) This is how I got into raising guinea pigs, and horseback riding, and crafty things. The only thing they pressued me into was violin lessons, and eventually I became motivated to do that on my own, but not because I had any musical talent; I was friends with the violin teacher's daughter. I had plenty to do, but also plenty of unscheduled time to play, or ride my bike, or whatever. My brother was a very talented athlete, and they encouraged that -- but with firm boundaries of one sport at a time (he played soccer in the fall and baseball in the spring, usually, and eventually became a very good lacrosse player), plus Boy Scouts if he wanted to do it.
Our parents were well-educated and had high aspirations for us, but they didn't see the need to enforce a lot of "resume building" activities on children. We had dinner as a family 6 nights out of 7, which in my opinion was much more valuable than anything I might have picked up from more extracurriculars. And Alan and I both turned out fine (eventually); we both have good jobs and advanced degrees and rich, full lives. (Alan lacks a spouse, which he really wants, but he is working on that :)
comments welcome, as usual...
