Hey mom and dad - I can't breath with you so close!

The article "The Child Trap" discusses the ways in which parents choke their children with love, forces them to do too much too fast, and taking their childhood away too quickly.  Children these days aren't just spoiled, they are spoiled and pressured, and the two sometimes go hand in hand.  I went to elementary school with kids who would get money or a toy if they did well on a test or played well for their sports team.  I was always told my reward is the education I was receiving, and that I didn't get a present because I was expected to do my best no matter what.  Parents are biased and wrongly focused on what they think is best for their child.  The article asks "How do you explain to the other mother that while her child spent the summer examining mollusks at marine-biology camp, yours was at regular old camp, stringing beads and eating s'mores?" I think there is a very simply answer to this question - my child was learning social skills and how to play and be a kid.  There is so much pressure from such a young age that some important parts of childhood are lost in th chaos.  Another good point which is made is about the children in East Asia.  While they are scoring highest on their math and science tests, no one is actually enjoying math or science.  When something you enjoy is forced upon you in mass quantities of which you must perfect all of them, the enjoyment is ripped out of the activity.  You can often see this with kids sports teams.  If someone loves playing soccer, they sign up for intramural soccer.  A certain skill level is developed so the child moves on to travel soccer and worked his or her way up to play for the top team, at which point his or her life consists solely of soccer.  Parents strangle their children with "love" and overly focus them onto one thing, rather than let them experience everything and then choose their favorite.  All children need a chance to just enjoy life, to make friends from all different walks of life, and to just be playful.  I'm not sure how truthful the facts about men these days are.  Or rather, how much I support these facts.  Just because women and men of color have the opportunity to hold high end positions doesn't validate white men slacking off. If there is more competition in the work force, one would assume people would just become more skilled and aggressive.  It seems an easy out for people to just move back in with their parents because "life's too hard."  It is ironic that parents push their children to succeed in everything, and it just turns around to leave the children overly dependent.  

One of my best friends growing up was obsessed with dancing.  Everywhere she was she would dance, any time we were waiting in line, or watching t.v. or anything, she just had to be dancing.  Her parents wanted to be supportive, so they increased the number of dance classes she took.  Then she joined the dance team.  She ended up moving and changing high schools because there was an amazing dance school near her new house, and since she spent so much time there it was more convenient to live closer.  Soon enough she was spending more time dancing then doing school work, sleeping, or being with her old friends.  Everything was dance.  By her sophomore year she was looking into dancing universities rather than going to a mainstream college.  Half way through her junior year she hurt her ankle and was unable to perform in the midyear show.  She realized how one permanent injury could ruin her life, because her life was dancing.  She immediately looked into colleges which offered mainstream degrees, but she could dance for fun as well.  She dropped some of her ballet classes and realized she had thrown away her old, functioning life for a stressful alternative.  When she first made all these changes her parents flipped.  She continuously had to remind them it was her life, and while she loved dancing, she wanted to be a successful wedding planner instead.  It took some time, but eventually her parents realized the more they pushed her to do something and suffocate her with their own goals, the less she wanted to do it.