The Hurried Child Syndrome
An Expository Essay
Written by
Marcial I. Enginco
Submitted to
Grace Koo, PhD
Professor, EDFD 210
Human Development and Learning
University of the Philippines Diliman
College of Education
PROLOGUE
Decades ago, a child barely 5 years old was left to fend for
himself for the entire day. This
happened five days a week, and lasted for several months. When he would wake up in the morning,
everyone in their small 3 bedroom house will be already gone. His father, a soldier would have already
reported for duty; his mother, a school teacher would already be at school
where she taught and his five elder brothers studied. He was left at home because he was not yet in
school age, and alone because there was no money for househelp who could look
after him.
His parents left him ready food for lunch. And when there was none, he had been taught to
cook rice and to use the stove to fry egg, fish or whatever was in the
refrigerator. He entertained himself by
drawing human faces and figures in various states of emotion and motion,
airplanes with tank rails exchanging bombs and gunfire with large battleships
with wings, and animals and insects that found their way on paper and climbed
over to the wood panels that comprised their humble home’s walls. And when the creative drive waned, his active
and curious side kicked in – running and jumping to see how fast and high he
could go. He would look for spiders, climb
trees, and watch and catch small colorful fish in the canal, depositing them in
bowls, believing that someday they will grow into fish that can be served on
the table. He did what he wanted and was
not afraid to discover new things. He
was free. Many individuals wait for a
lifetime to find that elusive sense of independence; he simply opened his eyes
one morning.
He sensed nothing unusual about this, nor did he think that
there was another way to spend childhood.
After all, it was his first time to be a boy.
_____
I thought that The Hurried Child Syndrome referred to anyone who
grew up, or became an adult, too soon, which is how I would characterize my
childhood development. But a cursory
Google search (Farlex) reveals this definition of Hurried Child Syndrome: “A condition in which parents over-schedule their children's
lives, push them hard for academic success, and expect them to behave and react
as miniature adults.” My parents did not
over-schedule my life nor pushed me to succeed, as the definition suggests;
they simply left me alone to be, in some respects, an adult in a child’s body.
David Elkind, a professional child psychologist formulated the
Hurried Child concept as he, in the late 1960s and ‘70s, observed that children
of that era were alarmingly being exposed to (Elkind, 1981) instructional and
educational approaches that were beyond the developing minds’ grasp; popular
media that glamorized and regularized sex, drugs and violence; shifts in social
norms where divorce and subsequent and sometimes casual entry of either parent into
a new relationship became more common, if not expected, and; the emergence of homosexuality
as a third, but increasingly vocal and influential gender. This confluence of factors became the basis
for Elkind’s claim in his 1981 book The Hurried Child: Growing Up Too Fast Too Soon, that children are
forced to take on the physical, psychological and social trappings of adulthood
before they are prepared to deal with them.
Elkind observed that this phenomenon was more pronounced in
middle class families where parents felt more pressure to prepare their children
to become competitive, if not winning adults in an increasingly dog-eats-dog
world. Parents with this inclination
placed more premium on the child’s early education and training, further
tipping this with an excessive inclusion of enrichment programs and extracurricular
activities that practically left the child with no time for play and
relaxation.
This forced schedule and driven existence, Elkind claimed, unfairly
and unnecessarily exposed the child to the undue stress of attaining success and
delivering results, and to its opposite pole – falling short of expectations, and
the accompanying stress of handling failure like an adult. Elkind concluded that a large portion of
troubled children who saw clinicians to report experiencing school failure,
involvement in delinquency and drugs, and those who are committing suicide are
hurried children. Further, many such children
exhibited psychosomatic complaints such as headaches and stomachaches, and
generally showed signs of being chronically unhappy, hyperactive, or lethargic and
unmotivated. These were stress symptoms
that were normally only found in adults.
So what triggered parents and society in general to rush
children into adulthood? The answer,
according to Elkind, is a complex series of events that was instigated by the
Russian launching of the Sputnik, the first man-made satellite, into outer space. Only over a decade removed from the Second
World War, the two superpowers were in a heated duel to outdo each other in
every front possible, and conquering deep space was the ultimate race. The world knew that the event meant more than
just who did it first; but what it really exposed was the gap between communist
Russia’s quality of education and technology and that of the leader of the free
world, America. America’s embarrassment
led policy-makers to overhaul its educational system to concentrate on a
curriculum that unfortunately over-estimated children’s capacity to learn and
absorb complex educational concepts and materials. They believed that any subject can be taught
effectively in some intellectually honest form to any child at any age of
development.
This period of American self-examination was exacerbated by
the fury of civil rights movements who deplored the poor performance by
disadvantaged children in school; placing the blame on the educational system’s
failure to prepare poor children for the rigors of learning. In response, the government instigated
sweeping reforms in the educational system; beginning with the opening of public
schools to both black and white, rich and poor students.
Looking back, it was a bruised national ego rubbed worse by
burning social issues that brought about such a radical change in American
education.
But that was a generation ago, and the pace by which children
those days spent their youths would seem like a walk in the park by today’s
standards where cramming activities in a child’s timetable seems to be the
norm, rather than the exception in highly developed nations, and increasingly
so in countries wishing to be more competitive such as the Philippines where
the Department of Education recently added two more years to its basic
education program, what it now calls K + 12.
Curiously, the first feature of the revised program (Department of Education,
2012) is to strengthen early childhood education, which is kindergarten. Add to this one to two years of
pre-schooling, and the summer lessons, tutorials, additional enhancement
programs that parents regularly enroll their children to and we have a condition
very similar to what was being described by Elkind.
.
Kenneth Ginsburg, a medical doctor and prominent child
psychologist offers several key factors (Ginsburg, 2007) why parents resort to
overloading their children’s schedule; most of these, if one would analyze, point to the adaptive mechanisms employed by
parents to current changes in the work environment, technology and the society,
altogether. Some of the reasons why
parents overschedule their children’s work and study load include:
The prevalence of homes with either a single parent or two
working parents and the lack or absence of an extended family of adults
(grandparents, uncles, aunts, etc.) to watch over children, is a major reason
why modern parents resort to organized after-school activities and academic-enrichment
opportunities that are supervised by adults.
Parents who have attained professional success believe that
facilitating future opportunities for their children is the most effective use
of their limited time with their children. Parents who employ this tactic
measure their parenting style like they would their professional life – in
terms of efficiency and productivity. In
what is sometimes referred to as the professionalization of parenthood, some
parents believe that the more accomplishments done in the shortest allotted
time is the equivalent of excellent parenting.
Media also plays a major role in defining how parents should
go about their business of raising children.
Parenting magazines and TV shows bombard parents with messages about how
they should, at the earliest opportunity, actively build every skill and
aptitude that their children may use in the future; anything less would be,
well, bad parenting.
But what is alarming (Ginsburg, 2007) about such parenting behavior is that it
robs children of that magical gift that comes only with that particular lifespan:
Play. Ginsburg contends that taking away
play from a child’s normal activity also takes away the chance for the child to
use and explore his creativity and imagination, and learn and hone physical
dexterity, cognitive ability and emotional strength. He asserts that play-acquired competencies
enhance the child’s confidence and resiliency.
However, there is more to this issue than meets the eye. If it’s true that parents knowingly
compromise their child’s play time to give way to the more serious pursuits of
adulthood then they, along with authorities and institutions that allow and
even support such practice, are liable to being charged with violation of a
basic human right of a child – the right to play. The United Nations Declaration of the Right
of the Child (The United Nations, 2010) states that: The child shall have full opportunity (underline,
mine) for play and recreation, which should be directed to the same
purposes as education; society and the public authorities shall endeavour to
promote the enjoyment of this right.
But to
be realistic, I don’t see any group or institution raising legal charges
against parents or schools, or lobbying congress to adopt a bill that protects
this right and penalizes those who will violate it.
There
are certain quarters however that believe that the Hurried Child Syndrome is
not true (Hurried children a myth, Busy children thrive, says researcher, 2008);
in fact, the proponents of one study claim the contrary. Among the more interesting findings (S.
Hofferth, 2008) of the study entitled The Hurried Child: Myth or Reality by
Sandra Hofferth and company, include: that high level of structured activities
does not appear to be emotionally stressful for children; highly active
children don’t differ from children with a more balanced set of activities,
and; children who are most at risk of being depressed, anxious, alienated and
fearful are those with no activities.
The
findings of this study strongly debunk Elkind’s assertions that overworked
young children are stressed and unhappy.
Either way, I believe that it is the human organisms’ collective
adaptive behavior that pushes it to equip young children with the necessary
tools and advantages to survive and thrive in the ever shifting world that we
live in today; avoiding doing so, to me, would be counter intuitive.
The
condition under which Hurried Child Syndrome occurs, or does not occur, is to
me simply a product of parenting style – one that is not forced but rather
freely assimilated by adults. Hence, I
see no moral or ethical issue against parents who believe that their children
should possess all the tools that they could learn and handle.
So do I
believe that parents can hurry their child and do so negatively? Certainly. I see it everyday. I see adults using children to earn a living
in the streets selling, stealing and begging.
I once made a UN-sponsored documentary about child labor and I have seen
young bodies subjected to work that even adults would find difficult to do day
in and day out. I open the internet and
I come across news about mothers coercing their daughters to join child beauty
contests (Time, 2012)
where they are required to wear makeup, bathing suits and adult gowns; another
mother (Yahoo News, 2013) waxed her 3-year old daughter’s thick
brows, or unibrow as she called it, because it was, to her, unsightly, and;
another constantly brings her young daughter to the tanning salon because her
skin lacked glow.
Just the
other day, I watched a video being circulated in Facebook showing a group of 7
to 8 young boys and girls, aged 3 to 12 (just my estimate based on how they
looked) having a vodka drinking session.
What’s so despicable about this is that while the shot glass was being
passed around, the children’s parents and guardians were happily cheering as
the kids squirmed at the taste of the alcohol that even I, an adult, find too
potent for my liking. This is what I
find alarming more than children being stressed by too many activities that are
designed to make them capable and productive citizens in the long run. When adults place children in situations that
traditionally are only intended for adults, or when adults show children how
shallow and irresponsible adults can be, it sets a bad precedent that I hope
will not be followed and emulated by impressionable children.
This,
for me, is the other context of Hurried Child syndrome that is worthier looking
into.
_____
EPILOGUE
Young
children are incredibly resilient creatures.
In their own little way they can adapt adult concepts and make it appear
as if they know what they are doing or comprehend what they are saying, when in
fact they are simply mimicking adult roles as part of their child’s play or
logic.
Decades
ago, I told my parents that it would be best that they brought me to
Pangasinan, my mother’s hometown where her brothers and sisters still lived,
instead of leaving me alone and unattended in our home inside a military base
in Batangas. It was an innocent request,
one I suppose I made because I particularly liked frolicking in the clear stream
near my mother’s house. The next thing I
knew I was bundled for Pangasinan the following weekend where I would stay
until I was old enough to go to school.
When that episode of my life was being recalled by my mother to anyone
who cared to listen, she would always say that I talked and behaved like an
adult for me to think of something like that.
Until now I have serious doubts if that were so. But now I realize it was something that my
parents were painfully contemplating doing back then, but they simply couldn’t bring
themselves to, until I said so.
When I
returned to Lipa, my father’s once occasional drinking had become a nightly
habit. And as the youngest child I slept
together with my parents and became witness to their almost nightly
fights. By then, I began to feel that I
had the responsibility to become my mother’s defender and my father’s calming
presence. But I was still a child.
When I
went to school, I tagged along with my mother especially during lunch time
where I ate with her and her co-teachers inside the faculty room. I became privy to conversations of adults
about marital problems, work problems, financial problems and other problems
that I have not experienced nor heard of before. But I was still a child. And I was one when I was with people my
age. But after a while, I began to look
at the world with different eyes. In
many respects, I became an adult in a child’s body sooner than I wanted to.
