Hurried Child Project

Hurried Child Project

By: Sterling Jones

Television & Movies

As parents have given up their protective orientation toward their children, industry and the media have moved in to exploit kids. TV, movies and the music business feel they have carte blanche: There's now soft porn for teenagers. TV shows for children also include alot of violence and things that children should not be exposed to at such a young age.

Daily Schedule's

There are companies which sell elaborate cosmetics—lipstick, rouge, eyeliners—for 4-to 9-year-olds. Some of these kids now feel they can't go outside without their makeup. In commercials, young girls and boys wear designer jeans and sexy hairdos and stand in sexy positions. Children need markers, such as kids' clothes, to give them a sense of where they are and what's appropriate.

Sports & Recreation

Unfortunately play that was once recreational is now

professionalized. Summer camps and music camps etc are now used as competition instead of fun and we as a society have lost the essence of spontaneous fun for children !

What can parents and schools do to help children?

Relationships with parents

Clothing

.The pressure on today’s children to grow up fast begins in early childhood, starting with their clothing. We dress our children in miniature adult costumes.We expose them to gratuitous sex and violence, and we expect them to cope with an increasing bewildering social environment – divorce, single parenthood, sexuality, etc.

In the 40’s and 50’s, many parents were afraid of repressing their children and making them neurotic through too much discipline. As a result, children were free to express themselves, free to indulge in their most primitive impulses and, in a word, became “spoiled.” It is scary to a child to have power over adults. Children, when handed a power they did not want, did not need, and could not handle, become willful and domineering.

Unlike the spoiled children who remain children too long, hurried children grow up too fast, pushed in their early years toward many types of achievement and exposed to experiences that tax their adaptive capacity.

Parents and schools can help children to ultimately feel less hurried by simple communication, I think this is the easiest way to assist the child because if the child expresses his or her opinions and whether or not they feel hurried or not, the adult in the situation can express to child their role as a child to be a child but to also wants the child to try to excel and have high standards which in some situations is misconstrued to make the child "hurried."

In my opinion again the best way in my opion for parents and schools to help children would be to just communicate.

PRESSURE TO COMPETE

Another factor is the overscheduling of childhood. There is a much greater emphasis today on sports and academic achievement than in the past. Many parents worry that if they don’t enroll their kids in a lot of extracurricular activities, their children will be missing out or be left behind. Sometimes, though, parents involve their children in so many outside activities that they really have very little time left just to play, have fun and be kids.

How do we avoid hurrying our children through childhood?

Remember that play is an important part of childhood. Pure play is needed to reduce stress, foster creativity and experience joy. Adults shouldn't turn play into work, and they shouldn't try to teach children during their play period. When parents must leave their kids with others, they should tell their kids that they are going to miss them and that they wish they didn't have to go away.

Remember, it's impossible to accelerate emotional maturation. Children may act grown up, but they don't feel grown up. They may speak "adult" while their feelings are crying "child." In the final analysis, childhood is a significant part of life, and it should be respected and valued. Kids are entitled to their childhood, and we shouldn't hurry them through this stage.

Are girls reaching puberty at younger ages today? Among scientists, the question is controversial. Some say that in the middle of the 19th century, the average age for the onset of puberty in girls was 17, whereas it is under 13 today. According to a 1997 study of 17,000 girls, about 15 percent of white girls and 50 percent of African-American girls in the United States show early signs of puberty at the age of eight! However, some doctors dispute these findings and caution parents against simply accepting extremely early development as “normal.”

NEWS

A third factor that’s taking away from childhood is the 24-7 cable news coverage that many households have access to nowadays. “Children are seeing too much of the negative, often sensationalistic and frightening news events when they’re too young to handle it,” says Elkind. He believes that the 24-hour coverage of the Iraq War, for instance, served only to scare children and put another level of strain on them: “This news can be hard enough on adults to watch, but we can usually handle it. It’s too much, though, for little children.”