Free Republic

Is your child ready for first grade? Earlier this month, Chicago Now blogger Christine Whitley reprinted a checklist from a 1979 child-rearing series designed to help a parent figure that one out. Ten out of 12 meant readiness.... "Can he travel alone in the neighborhood (four to eight blocks) to store, school, playground, or to a friend's home?" It's amazing what a difference 30 years have made.

It’s Sunday, the day of rest. So let’s give it a rest for the day – politics I mean.  Big Guy’s new Soak The Rich plan can wait for the State of the Union, and the #OscarsSoWhite situation is in Al Sharpton’s capable hands.So let’s shift gears and talk about the culture-at-large instead; specifically the care and tending of children in this dangerous culture. In The Overprotected Kid, Hanna Rosin argues that “a preoccupation with safety has stripped childhood of independence, risk taking, and discovery—without making it safer,” and showcases a special playground in Wales designed to reverse this trend.In...

New Playgrounds Are Safe—and That's Why Nobody Uses Them The problem with safety guidelines is that they make most playgrounds so uninteresting as to contribute to reduced physical activity. Playgrounds don't look like they used to. Steep metal slides and wooden towers have given way to slow, plastic slides and carefully penned-in climbing contraptions. And forget about seesaws -- they're a thing of the past. When kids are bored by unimaginative (read: safe) playground equipment, they're less active as a result, and with childhood obesity at epidemic proportions, that's a danger, too. An interesting new investigation looks into this phenomenon....

It’s that time of year. College seniors from around the world are graduating, and they are hitting the career world looking for a job. And the interesting thing is that most are not doing it alone. Many parents are by their Gen Y’s side and not just for support and to be a sounding board. If you are a helicopter parent who is hovering over your adult child’s job hunt and interview process, you may be hurting your child’s professional development and their chances to land the job. Helicopter parents have not only been bombarding college campuses, they are now...

Fred Rogers, the late TV icon, told several generations of children that they were "special" just for being whoever they were. He meant well, and he was a sterling role model in many ways. But what often got lost in his self-esteem-building patter was the idea that being special comes from working hard and having high expectations for yourself. Now Mr. Rogers, like Dr. Spock before him, has been targeted for re-evaluation. And he's not the only one. As educators and researchers struggle to define the new parameters of parenting, circa 2007, some are revisiting the language of child ego-boosting....

'Helicopter parents' still hover even as grads pound pavement By Eleanor Yang Su STAFF WRITER July 5, 2007 Rowena Paz's parents did everything they could to help her land a good job after college. They edited her résumé, suggesting experience she should play up or cut out. Her mother called regularly to remind Paz, 21, to get enough sleep before interviews. Her father coached her with interview questions and drove her to three job interviews in Los Angeles, because “driving in Los Angeles is tension-filled.” It came naturally for Paz's parents, who for years shuttled her to music and karate...

Spiraling Out of Control By Susan Coll Sunday, March 4, 2007; Page B01 A recent e-mail from Amazon.com made my heart start racing. My order had been shipped, it said, and "Living Abroad in Costa Rica" would arrive any day. I had never heard of this book. Had someone hacked into my computer? I thought of identity theft, credit card fraud -- and then of my 17-year-old son, who was deep into high school senioritis. He confessed to placing the order, defensively reminding me that I allow him to buy books with impunity as part of a mostly unsuccessful campaign...

Putting Parents In Their Place: Outside Class Too Much Involvement Can Hinder Students' Independence, Experts Say By Valerie Strauss Washington Post Staff Writer Tuesday, March 21, 2006; A08 They are needy, overanxious and sometimes plain pesky -- and schools at every level are trying to find ways to deal with them. No, not students. Parents -- specifically parents of today's "millennial generation" who, many educators are discovering, can't let their kids go. They text message their children in middle school, use the cellphone like an umbilical cord to Harvard Yard and have no compunction about marching into kindergarten class and...

WESTBURY, N.Y. -- A Westbury mom said she will try again today to have her deaf son bring a "helper" dog to school. Nancy Cave said she was stopped Wednesday by school officials and police when she showed up with her 14-year-old son and his dog named Simba at West Tresper Clarke High School in Westbury. Cave said she told the East Meadow School District Board about the dog, which they picked up last week from a Massachusetts training center. School officials said the ninth grader doesn't need the dog to attend classes. The Caves believe John and Simba must...

CHICAGO -- Some parents are writing their college-age children's resumes. Others are acting as their children's "representatives," hounding college career counselors, showing up at job fairs and sometimes going as far as calling employers to ask why their son or daughter didn't get a job. It's the next phase in helicopter parenting, a term coined for those who have hovered over their children's lives from kindergarten to college. Now they are inserting themselves into their children's job searches -- and school officials and employers say it's a problem that may be hampering some young people's careers. "It has now reached...

Helicopter parents. It's the scornful label some give to parents who seem to hover over their kids, unwilling to trust them to handle even the simplest situation on their own. But in the age of GPS, parents no longer need to do the hovering themselves. Parents can be nosier than they ever thought possible, for a price. Helicopter parents, meet satellite parents. What were once the tracking tools of spies and private investigators are now being offered to mainstream America, specifically parents who want to keep constant track of their kids in real time. Already, millions of families have discovered...

Parents of University of Florida students log on to their children's personal Gator-Link accounts to check grades, then call deans when they don't like what they see. University of Central Florida parents call administrators to complain when their kids can't get into classes they want. At Florida State University, parents of graduating seniors haggle with job recruiters. They want to make sure Junior gets a good salary and work schedule. University administrators have a name for these baby boomer moms and dads who hover over their offspring's college lives. "Helicopter parents," says Patrick Heaton, FSU's assistant dean of student affairs....

In interviews with a job candidate last year, Deborah D'Attilio, a recruiting manager in San Francisco for Enterprise Rent-A-Car, was surprised when the young woman brought a companion: her dad. Saying ''he was interested in learning about the work environment,'' the father sat in the lobby during the interview, D'Attilio says. She didn't hold it against the candidate and wound up hiring the young woman. Hovering parents are going to work. From Vanguard Group and St. Paul Travelers to General Electric and Boeing, managers are getting phone calls from parents asking them to hire their 20-something kids. Candidates are stalling...