High Maintenance Mom

A recent report, "The Importance of Play in Promoting Healthy Child Development and Maintaining Strong Parent-Child Bonds," by the American Academy of Pediatrics promotes free play for kids and discusses how our current hurried lifestyles (too many activities) are hurting our kids instead of helping them. Unstructured play has been found to help kids reach important developmental milestones...

Among the specific guidelines, the report suggests:

* Emphasizing the benefits of "true toys", such as blocks and dolls, in which children use their imagination fully over passive toys that require limited imagination;
* Supporting an appropriately challenging academic schedule for each child with a balance of extracurricular activities. This should be based on each child's unique needs and not on competitive community standards or need to gain college admissions;
* Helping parents evaluate claims by marketers and advertisers about products or interventions designed to produce "super-children;"
* Encouraging parents to understand that each young person does not need to excel in multiple areas to be considered successful or prepared to compete in the real world;
* Suggesting families choose childcare and early education programs that meet children's social and emotional developmental needs as well as academic preparedness. (from AAP report press release)

The AAP has also created a Resiliency Web site, www.aap.org/stress to help parents and teens understand the role stress plays in our lives. I recommend checking out their stories about stress and solutions for reducing stress. Here is their example of some of the stresses parents put on kids, "Hurry up, finish this, do your homework, go out for the team, practice your music, do your best, stay out of trouble, make more friends, don’t ever try drugs." It's a little scary that with kids under the age of five, I can already relate to how some of my language might not be as helpful as I would like. Of course, I really do think our four year-old should be able to clear his plate from the table in a reasonable amount of time.

If you are looking for a book for adults, Stress for Success, can help you work towards having small amounts of stress for motivation while avoiding going over a limit (stress is cumulative) where every little thing becomes overwhelming. Maybe I should reread it too...

Please also see Letting kids play.