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recent posts
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Ending Koala Overkill
Hell... Handbasket... How?
Night Freak (Well, Dawn Actually)
Hating the Chair
If You Can't Do It, There's Always Buying It
Endless Distraction
Oh, Grow Up
Applying Oneself
The Colic Defense
Saying Something
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Krispy Teacups
Finally, something nominally interesting in the New York Times Magazine. I got peeved a few weeks ago when they ran a long and embarrassing excerpt from Susan Sontag's diaries. Surely, even if she didn't name names directly, she couldn't have meant for all of that mind-blather that she (and everyone else, really) generates and blots out to be published for everyone to read, squint at, wonder who she was talking about or sleeping with and feel squirmy about.
Anyway, it's a little after the fact to mention it but Emily Bazelon had a longish piece ("So the Torah Is a Parenting Guide?") in the New York Times Magazine last Sunday about the psychologist and writer Wendy Mogel and her book The Blessing of a Skinned Knee: Using Jewish Teachings to Raise Self-Reliant Children. Now, parenting manuals aren’t my bag as a rule, and I'm not entirely sure the religious element is so crucial when it comes to theories of parenting, but I was still intrigued. At its heart the book suggests that parents generally tend to overemphasize the importance of things that can be measured- grades, test scores, athletic performance- over the general behavior of life. This results in children who feel extremely pressured to perform in school but who have problems doing rather quotidian things (laundry and simple socializing, for instance). Mogel reports that college guidance counselors tend to refer to this type of kids as "teacups" and "krispies" and note that they don't tend to adjust well to independent lives.
The article points out that while much of what the book teaches comes from lessons extracted from Jewish texts, these approaches are not novel to other religions or to purely secular psychology (cognitive behavioral therapy, especially follows some of the recommended techniques).
It is unlikely I will read this book anytime soon, though Bazelon's piece is really interesting. Read it while you can. These aren't really the challenges I'm facing as a parent (there is still the chair struggle, which I don't think Mogel can help me with). But I took my first preschool tour yesterday and I looked at large groups of children in classrooms and wondered about the pressures they would be facing soon and what sort of trick it might be to keep my kid from turning "krispy" in the face tests and competition. Some Yoda-type figure would no doubt point that I must smash my inner "teacup" in order to finagle a well adjusted kid.
But I don't really go in for pop psychology either.
posted by Elise at 11:06 AM
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said...
I saw a lot of that when I took my daughter to an art class for 2-year-olds. At the end of class, each kid was supposed to hold up their project to show the class, and I was stunned at how many of them had clearly been done by the parent. My kid's project may have been a big mess of glue and tissue paper, and the eyes were always in the wrong place, but at least she did it herself.
10/06/2006 12:19 PM
Elise said...
So, what do you think the parent got out of this? Is it a case of parents competing with other parents? Were the parents just bored and inclined to just do the art project themselves because it made them crazy to watch the kid do nothing but noodle with a blank piece of paper? Or do you think there is something about parents exerting real pressure on these tots - even though at 2 the kids would have a hard time understanding or responding to that kind of interference?
10/06/2006 1:59 PM
said...
I'm wondering what the point of having 2-year olds hold up their artwork and describe it is. That seems nuts to me. I can't imagine Peter sitting still while other kids did that, much less being able to "describe" his scribbles. It seems a little too much like introducing the pressure to look good to others into an activity that is supposed to be fun and creative.
--Elizabeth
10/06/2006 4:31 PM
said...
It seemed to me that the parents who did their kids' art projects were overly concerned with doing the project "right"--if the kid tried to glue things in the "wrong" places, the parents were correcting them (which also sort of goes against the "art" concept in my mind, but that's a different discussion).
The point of having them hold up their project, I think, was just so they could show off their work and have the other kids clap for them--there was a little song involved, so the kids didn't seem to have any trouble sitting still through the routine. It was really cute most of the time, but when some kids held up projects that they clearly had no hand in, it was a little sad.
10/09/2006 10:47 AM
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