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Strollerderby
A soccer ball to one kid's head means a whole school is now ball-less
I could understand a school banning dodgeball because it can be a rather violent game. But banning actual balls? That takes, well, another kind of balls.
A Toronto school is banning its students from playing with soccer balls, footballs, volleyballs and tennis balls (yes, tennis balls — those ones with the yellow/green fuzz), according to Mommyish. Why? Because of the “extreme danger” that hard balls present.
“Any balls brought will be confiscated and may be retrieved by parents from the office,” said a letter issued by Earl Beatty Jr. and Sr. Public School in Toronto. “The only kind of ball allowed will be Nerf balls or sponge balls.”
I recently viewed this short video with tips on babyproofing your kitchen so it’s safe for toddlers yet still aesthetically pleasing. The expert in the video recommends putting those little plastic latches on the inside of your cabinets so as not to create the ugly eyesore of a big white lock on the outside. I wonder if the expert has kids? Or has ever been around kids? Or knows anything about kids?
I know, firsthand, that it takes an average of three tries before a toddler figures out how to depress those little childproof latches on a cabinet. There are other options out there for locking your cabinets. One that I had in my old house was a sturdy lock that could only be opened with a strong magnet. I thought it was great! Until my child found the hidden magnet and lost it, but not before using it to turn the TV all sorts of pretty rainbow colors.
“A child craves magic…and magic depends on having space where adults will not “butt in.” This includes literal space of the kind long gone from nearly every urban part of this country, like vacant lots and construction sites (not like playgrounds, which reek of adult intentionality), and also metaphorical space.”
So says Christina Schwarz in the most recent issue of The Atlantic, where she looks at childhood through two books examining the way we raise our children. One is a reissued classic, the other a historical analysis of our attitude towards play. Both, Schwarz says, bring her to the same conclusion: we have returned to an age where play for its own sake has lost its perceived value, and our kids are losing out big time.
Mom & baby from 1912. Overparenting?
When it comes to over-parenting, we know the story.”Parents these days” protect our little ones from dirt and pain. Parents call to protest if a darling isn’t invited to a party. We’re too invested in homework, we buy organic toys, and when our kids go to college, we still hold them too close. It’s a subject that writers enjoy revisiting periodically ever since the 2005 publication of Judith Warner’s blockbuster Perfect Madness: Motherhood in an Age of Anxiety. Almost six years into the exploration of anxiety-riddled, perfection-seeking parenting, is it time to move on?
The most recent report on the exhausted state of parents who try too hard to engineer perfect children comes from Katie Roiphe via Slate and the Financial Times. In it, Roiphe goes through the usual hallmarks of helicopter parenting – high design, packed schedule, careful prenatal diet. Reading her case against other parents I felt mostly familiarity until I got to this line: “You know the child I am talking about: precious, wide-eyed, over-cared-for, fussy, in a beautiful sweater, or a carefully hipsterish T-shirt.”
Actually, I don’t know that child. Because the perfectly turned out little guy who’s also and always a perfect little charmer, I’ve heard about him, but I haven’t actually seen all that much of him. Continue reading »
The American economy is so awful, the Wall Street Journal reports that parents of means are now resorting to buying franchise businesses to keep their adult children employed, shelling out six figure sums to purchase their little darlings Pita Pit restaurants and College Hunks Hauling Junk moving trucks:
Watching fellow college students working for $7.50 an hour after graduation, Tana Walther, a fashion-design major at Kent State University in Ohio, snapped up an alternative offered by her father — to run a Pita Pit restaurant he would buy.
“I guess I bought her a job,” says her father, Jan Walther, of North Canton Ohio. Prospects of a career in fashion seemed remote, and Tana, a college athlete, loved eating at Pita Pit restaurants while traveling with her track team. Her first new restaurant opened last year near campus in Kent, and the 25-year-old hopes to open several more.
Before we all let out a collective “yuck” let’s take a look at what’s driving the trend. Continue reading »
A recent article in The Globe and Mail describes helicopter parents as “the germaphobic, nanny-cam-using, teacher-stalking mothers (and fathers) everyone loves to hate.” But, it goes on to say, parents who hover are not just neurotic freaks; they’re educated (and often wealthy) adults responding in a “rational – if misguided” way to “dramatic changes in major social institutions.”
The way I see it, the breadth of the helicopter parenting phenomenon crept up out of nowhere – like cupcakes. Remember when cupcakes were something you thought about only if you were having a birthday party at school? (Something which, thanks to fear-mongering, isn’t even allowed anymore.) What’s so great about cupcakes? I should know, since my friends have a blog solely devoted to cupcakes. I get it, they’re cute, but does anybody even really like cupcakes? No one says, “You know what I could go for right now? A cupcake.” That’s never been said, except maybe by a helicopter parent.
Like cupcakes, parenting is trendy – as evidenced by this and so many other websites – and the innumerable magazines and books dedicated to the subject. Millions of dollars are being spent on unnecessary baby gear, in soft, soothing pastels or bright, funky colors, depending on how you see yourself. (Am I a loving, smart parent, or am I a funky, wild parent? Either way, I’m a good parent, that’s for sure. I mean, look at all this stuff!) What I’m saying is, you shouldn’t pay $4 for a cupcake and it’s silly to blow $35 on a onesie. But we do, because we love feeling hip. We love consuming, especially in ways that make us feel good about ourselves.
It stands to reason, then, that most helicopter parents aren’t evil jerks; they’re just victims of the false threats against children propogated by a 24/7 news media and the ever-increasing amount of businesses that stand to profit from the industry built around creating the perfect child. Continue reading »
The egregious marriage of helicopter parents and sports fanatics is apparently not just a United States phenomenon.
Two sets of Canadian parents filed suit last week against their local hockey team, The Avalanche Minor Sports Club Midget Junior A Team, after their sons didn’t make the cut.
Parent Vito Velela is quite clear about who has been hurt by his son Christopher’s failure to place: mom and dad. His court filing says he and his wife have been left “demoralized” by the decision to cut their son from the team roster since, after all, they’ve gone “well beyond the call of duty as parents in support of the Toronto Avalanche hockey team for two seasons.” Continue reading »
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