Slow parenting

by The WellBeing Team September 16, 2011

It pays to play
While hyper-parenting may give children every advantage to do more and be more, the result is often stressed-out kids and adults. The alternative is Slow Parenting, which allows children to explore the world and learn who they are, as well as their strengths and weaknesses, at their own pace. By Aleney de Winter

All parents want the absolute best for their children but it appears that we’ve been so busy child-proofing the world that we’re forgetting to world-proof our children.

It’s easy to see why the Slow Parenting movement is mushrooming. By no means promoting lazy or neglectful parenting, it advocates carefree, not careless, parenting that will help to produce happy, self-sufficient children who can manage their own lives.

“When your whole childhood is scheduled, structured and monitored by adults, when you are placed on a pedestal and told constantly how ‘special’ you are and when entertainment is supplied on tap, you never learn to stand on your own two feet.”

Children need technology-free time every day and the chance to play in the way children have done for centuries. Our children are in no way biologically different because of all our new technology — evolution doesn’t work that fast.

To many parents today, the idea of less is more when raising their children is an anathema. We, as parents, are actively encouraged to give our children the best possible childhood experiences to ensure their success and happiness in adult life. But it begs the question: what are the best possible childhood experiences? Is it the popular view of managing children and cramming their days with every conceivable organised and structured activity or is it simply allowing children to play; stepping back and allowing them face the world themselves?

As more and more parents ask themselves that question, the burgeoning Slow Parenting movement has seen a backlash against the over-zealous parenting some experts believe is backfiring unhealthily on today’s children. Parents are single-mindedly steering their children to the “top” as our celebrity culture leads to higher expectations of supposed perfection — perfect hair, perfect body, perfect career, perfect home and, of course, perfect children to complete the perfect picture. But it’s a materialistic and media-driven ideal of perfection and is not necessarily what’s best for our children in the short or long term.

Instead, it’s about perceptions of success and safety. There are parents demanding their preschoolers learn Mandarin in preparation for their future foray into global economics, doing hours upon hours of homework to get them into the “best” school or training them in front of so-called “educational” DVDs from birth in their bid to raise a prodigy. Some have schedules jammed competitively tight with dance, yoga, karate, piano, language, art and anything else they think might put their children higher up the learning ladder than others.

Meanwhile, yet others are standing on the sidelines screaming abuse at referees and teachers for the smallest perceived slight on their children or engaging their kids in hours of training to develop their budding talents as the next great elite athlete or future megastar. But these high expectations can starve children emotionally and make it more difficult than ever for a child to just be a child.

The trend of hovering parents, or helicopter parents as they are known in some circles, to obsess over the safety of their children has seen an onslaught of “parenting” products designed to feed the fear of a generation of parents who have lost their confidence. Parents have become easy prey for companies hawking everything from baby kneepads to protect them from crawling and crash helmets to protect toddling toddlers’ heads to GPS backpacks that track a child’s every movement. We’re so anxious and insecure that it’s building to a point where parents won’t let their children out the front door without a personal bodyguard.

While a certain amount of hovering is completely understandable and expected when it comes to younger children, we are taking it too far and for too long into their development. Parents and educators have collectively become obsessed with organising, supervising, measuring and fixing everything that a child does. We’re so fixated on eliminating risk, pain and failure from our children’s lives that some schools have banned everything, from harmless games of tag to hopscotch, for being too dangerous, one Australian school even going as far as banning marbles because of arguments, which raises yet another question: how will children learn to resolve arguments if they never have any?

At the end of the day, all parents want the absolute best for their children but it appears we’ve been so busy child-proofing the world that we’re forgetting to world-proof our children. Instead, we’re guilty of creating a generation of over-stressed kids who are living too fast and have too much. Children that require constant stimulation, can’t handle risks and who won’t know how to look after themselves as adults, unable as they are to cope with the realities of a world where Mum and Dad aren’t able to intervene on their behalf.

It’s easy to see why the Slow Parenting movement is mushrooming. By no means promoting lazy or neglectful parenting, it advocates carefree not careless parenting that will help to produce happy, self-sufficient children who can manage their own lives. The term “Slow” in the context of parenting doesn’t mean operating at a tardy pace; it means doing things at the right pace. It’s about quality over quantity, meaningful human interactions, being present as a parent and living in the moment.

In fact, a Slow Parent is a responsible parent because the model comes from a place of respect for children and of trust and belief in their natural abilities. It comes from allowing them to play and grow through organic learning and giving them the freedom to explore and use their imagination. It could be said it’s a more irresponsible parent who blindly hands their children over to outsiders or the television for their stimulation, education and care or imposes their own, no doubt well-intentioned, goals on the child instead of allowing them to make up their own minds about who or what they want to be.

While it’s not possible to love your kids too much, it’s very much what you do with that love that counts. In fact, the American Academy of Pediatrics has recently warned that the decrease in free playtime for children may also carry risks to their long-term health and that for some it may contribute to depression and childhood obesity.

In the book Under Pressure: Rescuing our Children from the Culture of Hyper-Parenting, author Carl Honoré, champion of the Slow Movement, offers parents a reasoned alternative to the trap of hyper-parenting. Honoré believes that, while there is no ideal model because there are lots of ways to grow up, there are basic ingredients all kids need: “healthy food, enough sleep, time to play and get bored, freedom to think and explore the world, the right to chose their own path in life, love, security and affection with no conditions attached”.

He adds, “We all want the same thing: for our children to be healthy and happy and to reach their full potential. And we can all have this if we relax a bit; if we get the right balance between doing too much for our children and doing too little. Every aspect of childhood has been affected by our impatience, our obsession with competition and our tendency to micro-manage the young. But this approach does not work. A child isn’t a piece of clay you can mould into a work of art. A child is a person who will thrive if allowed to be the protagonist in his own life.”

Under Pressure skilfully demonstrates how slowing down can benefit both parent and child and how, instead of over-stressed children, we can raise a generation of children that are healthy — emotionally, physically and mentally.
For Honoré, the catalyst for embracing Slow Parenting was a parent-teacher evening. “The feedback on my seven-year-old son was good but the art teacher really hit the sweet spot. “He stands out in the class,” she gushed. “Your son is a gifted young artist.” And there it was, the G-bomb, the six-letter word that gets the heart of every parent racing. Gifted. That night, I trawled Google, hunting down art courses to nurture my son’s gift. Visions of raising the next Picasso swam through my mind — until the next morning. “I don’t want a tutor. I just want to draw. Why do grown-ups always have to take over everything?”

The question stung Honoré. “My son was right: I was trying to take over. That showdown with my son was the trigger that set me off on the journey that ended up with my writing Under Pressure. I wanted to find the balance between doing too much and too little for my kids.”

Now Honoré is all about bringing back that balance into general home life. “We try to raise our children calmly. They have lots of unrestricted time to play and think. We limit the time they spend using technology. We let them take risks. We talk, read and play games together. We treat them as people, not projects.”

His vision is about keeping the family schedule under control so everyone has enough downtime to rest, reflect and spend time together while still allowing kids to strive and struggle and stretch themselves. It’s about giving them the time and freedom they need to explore the world on their own terms and understanding that bending over backwards to give them the best of everything may not always be what’s ideal — because it denies them the learned knowledge of how to make the best of what they’ve got.

Honoré suggests that with the rise in globalisation and workplace competition, today’s parents are living through their children more than any generation in history and are consumed by their success. And, while every society ends up with a model for childhood that reflects its own strength and weaknesses, in ours many adults are hyper-scheduled, hyper-stimulated and hyper-stressed. Sadly, we are passing all this pressure on to our children and, in doing so, destroying the simple joy of being a child. “We’ve turned childhood into a race and taken much of the magic away. And when childhood loses its magic, being a parent loses its magic too.”

The instinct to push our children isn’t new to this generation but the pressure for perfection in recent years has become all-consuming and we’re looking to our children to make us proud and to make up for our own perceived failures. Honoré says that, instead, “As parents we need to make sure our own neuroses and frustrations are not guiding our parenting and that we are doing what is in the best interest of the child and not for another ulterior motive.

“It seems to me that many of us put ourselves under pressure to push, polish and protect our children with superhuman zeal; to give them the best of everything and make them the best at everything. The result is that parenting becomes a cross between a competitive sport and product development.

“You don’t find much hyper-parenting in urban ghettos or refugee camps. Many children, especially in poorer families, suffer from parental neglect. Yet everyone is affected by the rise of the helicopter-parent because, the more obsessed the middle classes become with their own children, the less interested they are in the welfare of those further down the social ladder.”

Rates of childhood obesity, prescription drug addiction, depression, anxiety and the substance abuse, self-harm and suicides that often come with them are increasing across all social classes, but tellingly they have become more common in middle-class homes where children are being treated as projects. And of those who do survive their hyper-scheduled childhood unscathed, many find themselves struggling in the workforce rather than excelling.

“When your whole childhood is scheduled, structured and monitored by adults, when you are placed on a pedestal and told constantly how “special” you are and when entertainment is supplied on tap, you never learn to stand on your own two feet. No wonder employers complain that new recruits are bored easily, cannot handle setbacks and criticism and expect the world on a plate,” points out Honoré.

New technologies have opened up new ways to learn, communicate, play and express opinions. But Honoré suggests that children are simply spending too much time sitting in front of a screen, whether it be watching television, playing computer games or social networking. All this time spent engrossed in technology is time they’re not spending running around outdoors, learning in a tactile hands-on way or interacting with others face-to-face. So, although technology certainly has an important place, we need to strike a balance and control children’s exposure to it.

The Slow Parenting movement is about making childhood a journey and not a project. It is about children discovering who they are and what they are good at, over time, without pressure or someone else deciding for them. Slow parenting is about backing off and allowing children to be children, to enjoy free play that will teach them to think creatively. It is about taking pleasure in the moment and learning how to use time wisely. It is giving children the time and freedom to make mistakes, to occasionally make poor choices and come second so they can grow stronger and more resilient and use their failures to work out their personal strengths. But, most of all, it is about giving kids all the love and attention they need without conditions attached.

Adds Honoré, “We need to trust our kids more. They need guidance, structure and discipline, of course, but not to the point of suffocation. They are born programmed to learn, so if we give them the freedom to be curious, to reflect, to take risks and fail sometimes, they will flourish.”