Dear Overzealous Parents

The picture says it all...

via The NY Daily News:

A Manhattan mom is suing a pricey preschool for dumping her "very smart" 4-year-old with tykes half her age and boring her with lessons about shapes and colors. In court papers, Nicole Imprescia suggests York Avenue Preschool jeopardized little Lucia's chances of getting into an elite private school or, one day, the Ivy League.

She's demanding a refund of the $19,000 tuition and class-action status for other toddlers who weren't properly prepped for the standardized test that can mean the difference between Dalton and - gasp! - public school.

"This is about a theft where a business advertises as one thing and is actually another," said Mathew Paulose, a lawyer for the outraged mom.

"They're nabbing $19,000 and making a run for it."

Impressed by the school's pledge to ready its young students for the ERB - a test used for admission at top private schools - Imprescia enrolled her daughter at York in 2009. A month into this school year, she transferred the child out of the upper East Side center because she was forced to slum with 2-year-olds.

"Indeed, the school proved not to be a school at all, but just one big playroom," the suit says.

The court papers implied the school could have damaged Lucia's chances of getting into a top college, citing an article that identifies preschools as the first step to "the Ivy League."

I've always been happy with my parents... Always. Even when they annoyed me into oblivion, placed ridiculous (at the time; now I know they were for the best) restrictions on me, and found every way to make me miserable, I know it was because they wanted to see me succeed. That's generally what any parent wants. It's what a parent should want. But what happens when a parent takes championing their child and their child's need for success too far? What happens when the most innocent times in a child's life, such as preschool, become sullied with aspirations of post-secondary grandeur and accolades? What happens when something as sacred as playtime isn't treated as such, but as a gateway to Ivy League matriculation? Such is the case today, where Nicole Imprescia of the Upper East Side in NYC (now you know it's getting hoighty-toighty!) has decided to sue the York Avenue Preschool for 'ruining' her child's chances at an Ivy League education.

First of all, since when have sandboxes, Legos, stuffed animals, finger-painting, monkey bars and those cool rainbow parachutes become a barometer for success? While attendance of preschool has been proven to raise a child's chances of success in the long-run, I'm pretty sure that there's not a minimum price that guarantees that a child will somehow become Goddard. As a parent, getting your Neiman Marcus knickers in a bunch to push your kid into the Harvard of preschools is a waste of time. At that point, every child has the same chance of becoming a genius.

Second of all, why is society trying to push kids who just left toddler-dom straight into adulthood? As far as I'm concerned, all a 4 year-old child cares about during that period is what color crayon they want to scribble on the walls and where to wipe their boogers after a good old-fashioned gold-digging session. The last thing on little Timmy's mind during recess is whether he wants to major in English or Biomedical Engineering at Harvard. Show me any 4 year-old child who knows what Harvard is, much less what college is. Instead of worrying about your child's still burgeoning educational development, how about you let your kids go get some friends and develop social skills naturally?

Third of all, what kind of whackjob of a mother sues over something so silly? The only thing being won in this case is a whole boatload of negative press for little Lucia once she does get to college-age. I guarantee that whatever school she does end up applying to is going to go into their archives (because we all know in 14 years, that nothing will be private) and see her mother on the front page of some parenting magazine looking like Tipper Gore at a Odd Future concert: ridiculous. Is that really what a parent would want? What are you going to do when your kid gets into any type of trouble? Are you going to sue your kids' bullies when he scrapes his knee? Are you going to sue the opposing basketball team when your kid suffers a last-second loss? I hope not. Here's my advice, overzealous parents: Let your kids be kids. Let that rugrat go get dirty and enjoy what little innocent time he has before society poisons him with consumerism and he loses his natural wonder and honesty...

The Next Basketball Phenom

I thought it would be only right to post this considering we're witnessing the advent of one former phenom into the limelight. Then again, you have to admit that it's a bit sick how society, or sporting society, is weeding out the prodigies at younger and younger ages. Dakota Simms is only 9 years old, yet is being looked at for college basketball already. He's ridiculously talented for his age, but does that mean we should start to sap the fun out of his livelihood and start surrounding him with people who only care about him because of a gift? Dakota looks like he would love nothing more than to shoot around and dribble all day. The business side of sports should have no business in his business at this point. At the same time, it's still exciting to see what the future of the sport of basketball holds. I'm thinking a 7-year $500 million deal in 2025. Something tells me Dakota and the young man below will be seeing a lot of each other down the road. Check out both of the next to be next up in basketball...

Dear Over-parenting Parents & Schools

via The New York Times:

Most children naturally seek close friends. In a survey of nearly 3,000 Americans ages 8 to 24 conducted last year by Harris Interactive, 94 percent said they had at least one close friend. But the classic best-friend bond — the two special pals who share secrets and exploits, who gravitate to each other on the playground and who head out the door together every day after school — signals potential trouble for school officials intent on discouraging anything that hints of exclusivity, in part because of concerns about cliques and bullying.

“I think it is kids’ preference to pair up and have that one best friend. As adults — teachers and counselors — we try to encourage them not to do that,” said Christine Laycob, director of counseling at Mary Institute and St. Louis Country Day School in St. Louis. “We try to talk to kids and work with them to get them to have big groups of friends and not be so possessive about friends.”

“Parents sometimes say Johnny needs that one special friend,” she continued. “We say he doesn’t need a best friend.”

That attitude is a blunt manifestation of a mind-set that has led adults to become ever more involved in children’s social lives in recent years. The days when children roamed the neighborhood and played with whomever they wanted to until the streetlights came on disappeared long ago, replaced by the scheduled play date. While in the past a social slight in backyard games rarely came to teachers’ attention the next day, today an upsetting text message from one middle school student to another is often forwarded to school administrators, who frequently feel compelled to intervene in the relationship. (Ms. Laycob was speaking in an interview after spending much of the previous day dealing with a “really awful” text message one girl had sent another.) Indeed, much of the effort to encourage children to be friends with everyone is meant to head off bullying and other extreme consequences of social exclusion.

It's a sad day and age when kids aren't allowed to just be kids. It's even sadder when adults feel the need to intervene out of some self-obligation to protect kids from bullying. I understand that bullying is an issue and that the repercussions for not attending to bullying problems can be fatal (see: Columbine). That said, trying to create an artificial 'group' of friends is downright ridiculous. Parents, while I'm no expert on child development, my childhood years are not that far behind me. I can remember having in my 10 (give or take) years of childhood 3 exclusive best friends. No, it wasn't always pretty when arguments and fights did occur, but you have to learn how to deal with it. Over-parenting parents, by making kids be friends with everyone, you're slowly yet surely weeding out discernment, among other things in a child's life. If a kid has to be friends with everyone, then he's really good friends with no one. The child gets no sense of what he does or doesn't like in a person because he's forced to like everyone. It's almost torturous to think that kids have to be nice to and play with everyone, simply because a school administrator says so. What's worse is the false sense of security that children grow up with because of such sheltering.

When I was a kid, there was freedom: freedom to make friends, freedom to stop being friends, freedom to be hurt by friends and freedom to make up the next day and go on about our days like nothing ever happened. Parents and schools who force kids to be friends with everyone, you're building up artificial security, in that these kids never will experience rejection in its most natural form. By holding the reins on organic relationships, you're allowing kids to grow up thinking everything will simply fall into place because 'that's what the teacher says'. Instead of fostering natural development, you're raising these 'bubble' kids, who have everything in their lives vacuum-packed and hermetically sealed. You don't allow them to experience pain or hurt at a young age, so when they enter the 'real' world (I don't think there will be a 'real' world in 30 years) everything is a shock to them. Kids will grow up, and at the first sign of adversity, they freak out because nothing's ever gone wrong.

That's not to say that we should toss children into the fire and see if they make it out without burns. It means they should be free to run, jump, slide, hang, fall and ride out with whomever they see fit. If the friendship doesn't work, so be it. Kids are born with two things inherently: a clean slate and natural resiliency. Hindering either of those leaves a huge void in their development, both socially and emotionally. Parents, stop trying to raise the perfect generation of kids and allow kids to be kids. We will never live in a Utopia, and sheltering the next generation won't ensure that anymore than brain-washing and full censorship. Word to Dystopian literature...