Kids are not China dolls

The movement to treat kids with velvet gloves and shield them from any possible disappointment is growing in this county at an alarming pace.

I think it's completely ridiculous not to allow kids to experience some kind of letdown, frustration, or failure. The latter word has virtually been banned by schools across the country, for fear that kids hearing it might think of themselves as failures and get depressed or feel crushed.

Just consider the ridiculousness of this article:

Gone are the days when a kindergartner dropped a handful of party invites in the classroom cubbyholes of their closest buddies. Today, if anyone is excluded the invitations can't be handed out at school.

The idea that protecting kids from rejection is crucial to safeguarding their self-esteem has gained momentum in recent years.

Take Valentine's Day: At some schools, a second-grader can't offer paper valentines or heart-shaped candies to a short list of pals and secret crushes anymore. They give cards to everyone or no one at all.

Or sports: In many towns, scorekeeping no longer happens at soccer or softball games played by kids under 8 or 9. Win or lose, every player in the league gets a trophy at the season's end.

That's so wrong. And on so many levels. Why can't they invite only the people they like to their party? Why do they have to invite everyone or no one? Yes, they can hand out the invitations outside the school setting, but that's where the kids see each other every day. They can't just "hook up later" or something.

And what's the benefit of giving a medal or trophy to anyone participating in a sport event? All that does is diminish the importance of the reward itself. Kids are not stupid. They might not think much of it at first, but once they realize that everyone is getting the same prize, that prize will lose its luster. They will see that the kid who didn't work hard at all got treated the same way as the one who worked the hardest. The net result will not be to spur the lazy one to work harder. It will be to induce the hardest working kid to loosen up and do less. After all, why bother?

Here's someone who agrees with me:

"You try and do things gently when they're little because it is still hard," says Grossman, who is raising two teenagers while teaching preschool. "But I think this is a problem, and it's a growing one, because kids grow up and have this inflated sense of self-worth. Whether they earn anything, it's always a trophy. They have no sense that you have to work hard for some things."

And here's someone who doesn't:

"When we went to school, people were bullied. Now we know kids have a much greater instance of suicide and depression when they've been bullied," she says.

The fact is, kids are still going to be bullied, whether they are shielded from disappointments or not at an early age, and all this smothering just worsens the effect of the bullying that they might endure later on.

Here's an expert's take:

Rather than imparting self-esteem, some experts believe this gives kids an unhealthy sense of entitlement.

"Self-esteem comes from those feelings you have about yourself for a job well done, for when you have achieved something," says Dr. Georgette Constantinou, administrative director of pediatric psychiatry at Akron Children's Hospital in Ohio. "It's not something you pour into your children."

She feels that many parents aren't equipping their kids to manage basic challenges.

"How do you expect them to handle life's big bumps if they haven't experienced the little ones?" she asks.
[...]
Critics of the trend worry about a generation of kids who haven't experienced rejection or failure -- especially compared with countries such as China and Japan, where a focus on competition defines the lives of many children.

Learning to compete, says Nichols, is vital. "It sets them up for real life things like a job," she says. "It helps people develop their skills."

I so agree with that statement. Ray and I enrolled the kids in basically the best daycare center in our town and are very pleased with the curriculum and the teachers. Recently, however, we realized that the school has no policy on disciplining kids beyond talking to them when they do something wrong and just asking them not to do it again.

Now, I certainly don't want a teacher to resort to physical punishment, but not even a time out? C'mon, what child has ever suffered lifelong scars from having been in time out? It's ridiculous.

Just yesterday we got a note saying that our son was throwing CDs. The note said he was told FIVE TIMES to stop, at which he'd just laugh. Eventually, they removed him from the area and made him sit quietly alone. But this only after we insisted with the school to take such measures whenever one of our kids misbehaves. Unfortunately, the "drastic" action came too late, in my opinion, since it should have been taken after the first CD was thrown, not the sixth.

And this one takes the cake: a teacher actually asked us to start calling "time out" quiet time or something like that at home, so as to keep it consistent with how they call it in school, since they're not allowed to call it "time out" at all!!

Pathetic. If a child misbehaves and is simply told not to, good luck with getting results. It might work for a while, or for some kids, but not for the vast majority. I can't believe those teachers just stand such behaviors from their young students all day long.