Indifferent and Overly Protective Parents Often Stymie Children's Social Skills
Posted: Wednesday, June 15, 2011
by Gerry Charbonneau
http://nibblednews.typepad.com
Most literature on the culture of adolescence focuses on peer pressure as a negative force. Warnings about the “wrong crowd” read like tornado alerts in parent manuals. . . . It is a relative term that means different things in different places. In Fort Wayne, for example, the wrong crowd meant hanging out with liberal Democrats. In Connecticut, it meant kids who weren’t planning to get a Ph.D. from Yale. " --- MARY KAY BLAKELY, American Mom
During the summer months the sounds of children yelling and playing in the school yard is absent. The empty bicycle racks attest to the fact that the youngsters are not in school.
Last September the school instituted a new policy. Adult crossing guards and school yard monitors during recess were employed to ensure the safety and the well being of the children attending classes there.
One would imagine this change in pseudo parental care was meant to protect the children from molesters, drug dealers and other unsavory types who patrol school yards in the hopes of corrupting innocent, unsuspecting children.
Truth be told the move was initiated to protect the youngsters from their fellow classmates. Recess, lunch hour and quitting time provides the ideal opportunity for the school bullies to inflict pain, fear and intimidation on those children smaller than themselves.
The warmer weather seems to inspire some children to throw off their masks of civility and don disguises meant to harm, harass and hurt their fellow students. The warmer weather also inspires their parents to become more aggressive behind the wheel of their cars.
I have seen these adult yard monitors many times break up gang beatings of the smaller, defenceless students. This is especially galling when their parents , who drive these kids to and from school, sit passively in their vehicles while their darling children beat the daylights out of fellow students.
The parents act as if they are doing their part to show society that they are doing all they can to protect the welfare of their children. They attend the requisite number of PTA meetings, meet with the teacher on student evaluation day and perhaps attend a few soccer games their kids are playing for the school.
But many have turned a blind eye to the fact that their own children have become monsters in the playground inflicting punishment and pain on other children who do not deserve to be targeted.
The school yard has set up sufficent racks for the students to ride a bicycle to school. There is probably space for roughly one hundred students to peddle their bikes to school. At last count I noticed only two bikes in the school yard...one for a boy and one for a girl parked closely to one another.
The majority of these youngsters live within walking distance of school . The neighborhood is very safe for them to either walk or bike to class. But their parents continue to drive them to and from school allowing them to miss out on developing any type of socializing skill set that walking to school with a classmate would possibly encourage.
It seems at times that many parents face a sense of dread, helplessness and indifference to the fact that they have problem children and also fail to realize that the school setting and teaching staff can only do so much to educate and socialize their children.
Rather than taking their kids to judo. karate or tae kwon do classes many parents should try aggression therapy and anger management classes for their offspring.
Sports activities may be a wonderful way to diffuse a lot of personal anger and energy. But some children are too emotionally immature to realize that a karate dojo and a classroom are not the same. The classroom is not the ideal ennvironment to vent hiden reserves of anger, energy or emotion.
The saddest part of this tale lies in the fact that over two hundred teaching and associate teaching positions will be axed from the school system come September 2011 due to budget cuts. It seems as if the battle for safer schools has encountered a financial and manpower snag.
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