You heard it here first, folks: parents are no longer content to hover like helicopters. Now they bulldoze into anything and anybody who gets in their way.
In an article that qualifies as Crazy Comment Monday material, Ole Jorgenson not-so-deftly psychoanalyzes all of us "GenX" parents and says well, it's all Nixon's fault. Or all our latchkey parents' fault and also due to the housing bubble. Well... ok... he wasn't so deft at the psychoanalysis. But I'm feeling that I *should* feel traumatized by all this stuff after reading about what a hard 'nuff life I have...
"Gen Xers orchestrate every move of their preschoolers, from perfect play dates and obsessively healthy diets, to instructional flashcards and hypoallergenic socks," he muses. Then the kids get older and parents are still super-bossy. Not only that, but unless we can get these parents to sit down, shut up and listen to what educators are saying, we can never have meaningful educational reform.
Yeahhh.
Let me just psychoanalyze my own generation for a sec. It's a new paradigm with proactive synergy and stuff. Here goes: we figured out our kids are OURS. That educators are not the experts in everything and further, they don't always have the interests of our kids at heart. We make mistakes. We can be rude. But we love our children.
And by the way, shut up about the hypoallergenic socks. So happens my kid is allergic to wool. With compassionate people like you in education administration, it's no wonder you have parental riots on your hands.
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Look Out, Dad!!
My father is the purple dot above the blue weather station. He's juuust outside Milton's evacuation zone. Well! My brother and I jus...
From the article's comments:
ReplyDeleteThe writer appears to be a Baby Boomer, which means that he was part of the generation that created a society of un-nurtured GenXers. Bravo, Ole Jorgenson! I blame you personally for all the failings of my generation. Oh wait, did I over-generalize? It must be because I learned it from you and your lazy article.
Hat tip to a friend who directed me to Joanne Jacobs' blog for this story. It is just cray-zee.
ReplyDeleteWhat a wacko!
ReplyDeleteI agree that some parents do overdo it with scheduling every minute of the kids days so the kids have no me time or free time, but mostly I'm glad that parents now are actually parenting compared to the laid back "don't inhibit the child, no discipline" style of several years ago that saw a generation of "me me me I want it right now don't say no to me" brats that never learned to discipline themselves and now run riot in the streets because they never learned their actions have consequences.
ReplyDelete