Jane

I think your assessment is spot on but only for a proportion of our current parents.

The generation you are assessing are the Grandchildren of the 'Baby Boomers'. Really what did we expect? What sort of parents are they who have taken their osmotic lessons on parenthood from their totally self-absorbed and spoilled 'baby-boomer' parents?

I was of the generation immediately following those 'boomers'. I am revelling in the departure and successes of my 'kiddies' in much the same way my parents revelled in my departure, my successes and my failures. Though I'm sure I detected in them a well hidden sense of relief, in their demeanours...often ... during our separation. The same relief, from the burden and stresses of parenthood, that I am trying to disguise, as non-chalance, and desperately trying to hide from my 'kiddies'. I'd hate them to know I'm actually enjoying their departures.

Keith

Not only are parents often overprotective of their "little darlings", but teachers have "seen it all".

Teachers feel they cannot touch their charges for fear of prosecution. Parents insist that teachers "treat their little darling with 'respect'".

We have a situation now where practically *any* "behavioural issue" becomes a basis for pointing the finger at the parents and expecting them to "resolve it" - tantamount to demanding they have their child sedated. And this is largely coming from *other parents*!

When a child *is* genuinely gifted, no one believes it anymore. Besides, resources "have already been allocated to *identified* schools with SHIP programs", etc, etc. Send your brat there (because that is *always* "convenient")

Many of these 'helicopter parents' actually fly in, drop the kid off, and fly off - expecting teachers to provide a child-minding service for them ... "Oh, and teach them *everything* while you're at it. Thanks." Convenience is king.

There are very few parents out there now, there are however quite a few "big people who have bred". It's hard to call some of them adults. Owning a 4WD does not equal mature.

Parenting is even rarer than the so-called 'parenting skills'. Having a child is a responsibility, not a right.

Liked the article.

If I might add we have also, like everything else, commodifed children; we have so few of them the demand on the obstetrician is to make sure its a bloody good one and if its flawed in any way one sues.

So we over value them and place extraordinary pressures on them to perform - in order for them to get ahead is usually the tale but more often than not it is to live part of our lives vicariously through them or just bask in their glory - when those expectations of ours are not meant the poor kid cops it.

I would not be a kid today for quids (unless of course I was my own parent)

As the P&C President at a Selective High School, I get to talk to the new Year 7 parents every year. Same speech "your kids have always come 1st or 2nd in their class. This year one of your kids will be 150th - half of them will be below 75th. How will they cope - how will you cope? Only by refining your concept of success".

Success is not merely academic, but has whole host of possible parameters. I'm leaning more and more to the concept of "personal best". It doesn't matter what any other child does, if this (my) child does the best she/he ever has at this endeavour (academic, cultural, sporting, whatever), then this is truly SUCCESS and needs to be celebrated wholeheartedly.

On another tangent, whatever happened to the good old values of a "liberal education"?

I swore that my children would never do without any of the things I really needed and never got. At the same time, one of my most "cutting"comments about someone is that "they've never gone without a meal in their life".

Well, guess what Kevin. You (I) have raised three children who never went without a meal in their life. They have no idea how to respond to real hardship, no sense of proportion of what "life owes them". They're really nice young people but they are a pain in the bum in terms of their unrealistic expectations of what society owes them and their children.

So I read articles like this with wry amusement. We create a society and its expectations (intentionally or unintentionally) and then bemoan the fact that our children live up (or down) to our expectations.

I'm not sure what the answer is. Hopefully it's a dialectic, where eventually either parents or, more probably, their children are disabused by real life of the idea that they're super special in time to come to a more realistic approach to educating and raising the next generation.

In the meantime, I'll love my children and keep quiet about the guilt I feel about how poorly I really raised them.

Regards

Kevin

Personally Jane I think that your friend that grew impatient and asked the teacher how she was going to handle the fact that all the 10-year-olds in her new class were used to coming in the top two or three of their class and, that as only two or three of them could do the same in this class, how did she intend to handle the inevitable blow to the children’s self esteem is the one with the problem.

The only person caught up in the “specialness and glory of their child” was your friend as she is the only one for which the thought of her daughter no longer coming first was something that warranted bringing up. Children are not stupid they realise that when they are in Opportunity Class they are being compared with the best.

What parents want is to be treated with respect and for their children to be treated with respect regardless of their ability and for their educational needs to be met and addressed at whatever level is required and appropriate as that sends the message that it is okay to be different.

I think that making everybody the same and aiming for ordinary is not a very good goal for our children to aspire to.