So, I’m a teacher. Have I men­tio­ned that before? I currently teach two days a week and I have a fan­tas­tic team part­ner who teaches the addi­tio­nal three days. I’ve been a teacher since I was 21. So for the last nine years I’ve had the plea­sure of coming into con­tact with many dif­fe­rent chil­dren and parents. And I’ve lear­ned a lot.

Today as I was scro­lling through my Goo­gle Rea­der, I came upon Sara’s post from Subur­ban Obli­vion. She recently wrote about being, or rather not being, the per­fect parent. Today she piggy­bac­ked on this post by wri­ting about kids who play inde­pen­dently vs. the ones whose parents are their playmate.

She wri­tes:

I remem­ber being as young as two or three pla­ying outside by myself in a yard that not only was unfen­ced, but had train tracks run­ning through the very back of the lot. I can feel the gasps from here– How did you ever sur­vive?? Back then there was a clear line bet­ween kids and adults. Kids pla­yed, adults did wha­te­ver adults did. Adults did not sche­dule their entire lives around what the kids wan­ted. If they could work it in, great. If not, oh well. I can’t ima­gine a per­son of my parents gene­ra­tion spen­ding the entire day shutt­ling kids back and forth to school, sports and play­da­tes, even if they WERE a stay at home mom. Yet like so many of my own gene­ra­tion, that is exactly how my time is spent.

I’ve often strug­gled with this as well. I don’t always enjoy pla­ying outside with my kids. I hate pla­ying trains, and most of all, I hate when my kids can’t be inde­pen­dent. I know, I know. Rank me up there as a ‘bad parent’ but I don’t care. I have s**t to do! On top of rea­ring my kids, I have a house to manage, finan­ces to keep up on, a hus­band to love, and a body to keep healthy. My sole job is not cate­ring to my kids every whim.

So now I’ll bring this back to teaching. I have noti­ced that the kids these days are very dif­fe­rent from the stu­dents of past gene­ra­tions. Stu­dents con­ti­nually feel like it is their right to have an ongoing per­so­nal dia­lo­gue with the teacher, whe­ne­ver they see fit. Often, very often, an assign­ment will be given and before a he even begins, the stu­dent is up at my desk saying, “I don’t get it.” As if trying but not com­ple­ting the pro­ject exactly the way the teacher might want it would be a fai­lure. Most teachers are so fle­xi­ble, that we will take anything that resem­bles the pre­vious directions.

It’s been know to hap­pen that when giving my stu­dents free time, I have a child-or ten, come up and ask if I want to play with them. Uh, no! I don’t. Go make friends your own age!

I’m pretty sure that there are a few fac­tors that lend them­sel­ves to this gro­wing gene­ra­tion of depen­dent children.

1. Nanny’s hel­ping to raise our kids. Can you ima­gine saying to your nanny, “Uh, ya. Can you allow my child to play inde­pen­dently? Feel free to watch a bit of TV today ins­tead…” No, we expect them to enter­tain our kids! I know I do, each Mon­day that our nanny comes over.

2. Parents fee­ling the need to be play­mate to their kids.

3. Sma­ller families.-giving us more time to devote to each child.

Some­ti­mes the guilt over­ta­kes us. I’ve been know to say to myself, “But BC is so dis­traught that I won’t go outside and watch him go down the slide.…”

Ulti­ma­tely, I believe that by teaching our kids to be inde­pen­dent, we are arming them with good tools to become suc­cess­ful, strong, secure, and con­fi­dent people.

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