Chapter 1 -- The Plight of the Modern Parent

This is Amy, and she is the author of our first blog entry. Of this picture, she said, "This is a picture of my dad and me when I was about 4 or 5 years old, I believe. We were out at my uncle's pond and this was my first fishing pole -- and first fish that I ever caught! I know it's small, but I still laugh every time I see this picture!" I think you'll enjoy reading Amy's response to chapter 1, and will see that her fun childhood has helped shaped her opinions about what's best for children. Enjoy!


Chapter 1, The Plight of the Modern Parent, really does a great job of illustrating the confusion most parents have when entering parenthood. As soon as I began reading and realizing all the choices a new parent must make, even before the baby arrives, I could see how stressful and scary having a new baby can be. A first-time-parent has so many choices to make, from car seats to cribs, strollers to diaper bags; even decisions that one would think should be easy become difficult. Walking into a store for babies suddenly makes the parents feel as if they are unfit because of all the consumer choices they have thrown at them. The new parent is told to make the best choice or else!

As this chapter continues, it begins discussing the pressure our society puts on children to learn and succeed at an accelerated pace. What shocked me was the fact that there are now flash cards for infants! This seems absurd and ridiculous to me. So there is literally no childhood now. Even before babies can communicate through language they are already being told they must learn these flashcards! While reading this part of the chapter, I began reflecting on job shadowing I did for a kindergarten class last year. I was amazed that by the spring of the children’s kindergarten school year they were expected to read, know a certain amount of sight words, write sentences about a picture they drew, and add/subtract. In some cases the workload would leave the children in tears from stress and the pressure of not feeling good enough. It was definitely sad for me to watch this because when I was in kindergarten, which was 17 years ago, kindergarten was still fun! Yes, I was still expected to learn. But, I was learning my colors, shapes, and some sight words. There were no sentences to write; I was still learning to trace letters and write my name. After reflecting on my experience with my own kindergarten class and the class I job shadowed, I now see why we have so many people in our prison systems. I strongly believe that because kindergarten is no longer set on building strong social and emotional skills, people do not have a foundation for how to deal with others. Instead, they feel pressured and not good enough by school standards, so they just fall through the cracks or drop out. With such an accelerated pace in school there is no room for a child to fall behind; once they are behind there is no time to play catch up!

This reading has truly made me want to somehow advocate for changing the ridiculous standards that have been set for school age children. I do not believe there is any way that these standards help, benefit, or make children any smarter than children once were. I want to advocate for schools to go back to teaching and setting a foundation for children’s social and emotional development. Then, around first and second grade, begin teaching reading skills and addition/subtraction. This will allow children to feel better about themselves, so they have the mental capacity to sufficiently learn these tasks without beating themselves up because they do not understand.