There’s not much time left to chill in our country, at least when it comes to parents’ pressure on kids to achieve.
It turns out that some meds taken by kids for ADD are also being called “smart pills” — they purportedly help them focus and concentrate for longer periods of time when cramming for finals or those dreaded SAT tests (and remember Lynette stealing them from her kids on that Desperate Housewives episode so she could get more housework done?).
Many experts are expressing concern and dismay about our children casually and needlessly popping pills for a few more fractions of a point on their GPA, but why should we be surprised?
As parents, many of us have made it our duty not just to educate our kids, but to create superstars. Parents hire consultants to make sure their children get into the “right” preschool, push the Baby Einstein DVDs, find educational summer camps, and then hire tutors to help them get through their high school AP courses so they can get into a big name college, skip the intro classes and make their way to the corner office of some big corporation. WHEW! Is it any wonder that our children have internalized our desires and, in combination with our own willingness to solve everything with a pill, have found their own way to achieve their goals through pharmaceuticals.
So I say it’s time to ratchet it back a notch. I’m sticking with the summer camp at the Y for my six-year-old this year. And when we’re done there each day, we’ll head over to the community pool for some swimming and maybe a hot dog, or too. I am going to try my best to keep from creating an uber-child whose parent-nurtured neuroses will lead her to medicating herself for a chance at that Ivy League education. I figure if she can just have fun, both at camp and at school, in the end, she’ll do just fine.
Tue, June 13, 2006
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