Higher crime rate than ever involving the very young. Growing up is tough enough with nobody pushing.Īm I overreacting to suggest that the unique traumas among today's children are somehow tied to all this? Younger and younger alcoholics. They have their own timing and rhythm, which cannot be hurried. "Such portrayals," writes Elkind, "force children to think they should act grown up before they are ready."Įmotions and feelings are the most complex and intricate part of a child's development. Music, books, films, and television increasingly portray the young as precocious and seductive. Have you noticed? Perhaps I'm overly sensitive because I've finished reading David Elkind's splendid book The Hurried Child, with the provocative subtitle "Growing Up Too Fast Too Soon." On the cover is a little girl, not more than eleven, with earrings, plucked eyebrows, carefully applied cosmetics, teased and feathered hair, and exquisite jewelry. There is a new youngster in our city streets. Life was allowed to run its own course back then. Listen, I went to school barefoot until the fourth grade, and I was still playing cops and robbers into junior high. There were family reunions at my granddaddy's little bay cabin, plus fishing, floundering, crabbing, swimming, and eating.īut best of all, we were given room to be kids. Sandlot football down at the end of Quince Street in East Houston or shooting hoops against the garage backboard. That's the only way to describe my early childhood.
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