She commented thus when, upon leaving boarding school, we were deciding upon what type of residence she should live in at university. At the time, I felt a pang of guilt for being overprotective. In hindsight, I feel given a second chance, I would do the same thing all over again although I do not believe many agree with my approach. It seems a cliché, but many children today ‘grow up’ and become worldly from an unspeakably young age. Innocence and lightheartedness are no longer treasured.


The KYOG phenomenon

The most noticeable manifestation of the early onset of adulthood is obviously in the area of dress. One only has to walk into the mall to agree or disagree with the observation. Those in marketing refer to the phenomenon as KGOY – Kids Getting Older Younger. I have often wondered why the children’s range of good old M&S (that stalwart of British emporia) had altered so much. Out went demure frocks in natural fibres and in came loud Barbie doll-type outfits in sickly pinks made of lycra with tacky motifs. Try as I might, I just could not find anything that I felt suitable for a little girl of eight. Is it only a matter of taste that I preferred demure dresses for my daughter instead of halter-tops and tight jeans?

If you are what you eat, they say, are you not also how you dress? Yes, according to Jazreel Chung in an article published on the internet in June . Dress is one thing but it is allied to the exposure to adult issues such as sex, dieting, alcohol and drugs. According to a survey done in 2005 by the Kaiser Family Foundation in the States, the percentage of sexual content on television rose from 56 to 70 percent from 1998 to 2005. While the dressing on its own may seem harmless, an attendant lifestyle is a given; teenage pregnancy has risen across 26 states in the U.S. according to USAtoday.com and Britain has the highest rate of teenage pregnancies in Europe.

In Jamaica, if children displayed any sort of unseemly precocity, they were dismissed peremptorily as being “force-ripe”. What an apt description – anyone knows that a fruit that has been ripened too early by extraneous methods apart from being left on the tree to ripen naturally, is not usually good to eat. In fact, some may even turn black and rot prematurely. A sobering metaphor for children fast-tracked to the adult world.

Dress is only the outward display of an accelerated childhood. Children are growing up too fast in all aspects of life: educational, social, mental and physical. Unfortunately for most, their emotional development does not keep pace with the other developments. We have to remember that children are not growing up too fast by choice. What parents do is the catalyst for the behavioural pattern of their charges. But we ourselves are the victims of a society that drives us to do what we do. We then pass this victim status on to our children. A bit of thought and sensitivity on our part as adults may at least help our children to be proper children and not “kidults.”

While we become younger and younger with 50 being the new 30, our children seem to be meeting us in the middle at an amazing rate, with 10 becoming the new 15. Parents want to cling to their youth and prolong it to the point of ludicrousness, and children want to abandon their youth as fast as possible …and we do everything to assist them in their unholy and lamentable quest. Oh the unfairness! --- We want to be Peter Pan but we do not want our children to even have a childhood.

‘Modern’ parenting: progressive, indifferent or naïve?

So many parents, in the Western world at least, have very laissez-faire attitudes towards the formation of their children ’s values. Many of them have been left to make their own decisions. This can be interpreted as being trusting or indifferent – whatever, it is regarded as ‘modern’ – an approach that is regarded well above all others.

We have only to consider William Golding’s Lord of the Flies that depicts children who have been left alone to fend for themselves. They become predatory and even, in the end, cannibalistic. An extreme scenario yes, but the incidence of children committing horrific crimes at a tender age has made the headlines on both sides of the Atlantic. Invariably the homes from which these children come have not been the best in terms of parental example. How many times have I heard: “Oh, let them make their own minds up.” “Let them do what they like.” “Let them choose what religion they should have. They can do it later.” The reins of guidance are handed over to the children themselves, not always with desirable results.


Media’s role

Entertainment is an area that is highly culpable for the loss of innocence of our children. Short of not having a television set in the home, it is virtually impossible to protect children from concepts which the most liberal adult would find distasteful. Now, even Disney, once a safe bet for wholesome, age-appropriate entertainment has recently been in the spotlight for producing films ill-suited to children.

Professor Jean Twenge a professor of social psychology at the University of San Diego said last year (2008) that in the movie Hannah Montana, children were being exposed to concepts such as: pressure to succeed, materialism, physical beauty, narcissism and romance, at a level which was not healthy. Some may argue that fairy tales such as Sleeping Beauty did the same thing. The eponymous heroine was attractive, as her name suggests, and her prince was also handsome and aristocratic (as princes usually are); moreover he kissed her and there was obviously oodles of romance. It is therefore not physical beauty, difference in social strata or romance that is at issue and it is definitely not the idea that one should always do one’s best to be ahead of the game.

The same notions present in Sleeping Beauty are in essence the same used in films such as in the overwhelmingly popular Hannah Montana which caused Professor Twenge’s concern. The problematic difference is they have been ‘juiced up’ to become ‘hardcore.’ This word once used to denote deeply depraved and lascivious pornography has, so to speak, jumped the species barrier to describe anything current which pushes the boundaries of good taste and acceptable morality and attempts to attract attention through shock. Obviously, producers on the whole hope to elicit a certain response from their viewers by exposing them to concepts and situations in graphically depicted scenarios at a younger and younger age. Our children are seeing ‘hardcore’ children’s movies. Their behaviour reflects the things they see both onscreen and sometimes in real life as some ape their parents’ lifestyles.

Last year, British society believed it had produced its youngest father. The photograph of a baby-faced boy who looked not a day over 10 posed on the covers of all the tabloid and quality press newspapers with his new-born baby girl. They said he was 13 and that his baby’s mother was 15. Eventually, after DNA testing was done, the country heaved a collective sigh of relief to find that Alfie was not the father but another boy of all of 15. What was amazing to discover was that the baby’s teen-age mother slept in the family house with a variety of boys with the full knowledge of the family. Even more shocking was that her grandmother had allegedly told her not to reveal the true identity of the baby’s father as Alfie was younger and that fact would make a better story. With offers from at least 15 television companies all vying for the right to the story, Alfie (and obviously the girl and her family) stood to make quite a few quid.


The ‘hurried’ child

Children’s childhoods are also under siege by parents who push them to achieve well beyond their years. We burst with pride when we say that our son is the youngest in the class, that our daughter’s reading age is that of a twelve-year old when she is only eight, and so on. We push and we push. In many situations, this is alright if the child genuinely needs a lot of motivation. It becomes less acceptable if the child is self-driven and anything over and above is solely to stoke the fires of pride and vanity in the parents. The popularity of ‘Baby Einstein’ products shows the mania for thrusting children beyond the bounds of natural behaviour, giving rise to yet another unfortunate label, the “hurried child”.

I recently came across an article from a relaxation expert for children². The author gives excellent tips on how parents could help children to manage stress so that they feel less rushed and overwhelmed. Excellent article though it was, it left a twinge of sadness that children should have the problem in the first place. Nevertheless the writer points out that “What helps children relax is their faith and trust in people they love.” Parents can try every one of the latest trendy bits of advice by many different gurus, but the child can only really relax if he knows that the grown-up is always in charge and will assess every situation and act in his fundamental and single-minded mission to protect the child.

Today’s children are more socially and physically advanced than their parents, they have been exposed to more experiences, enjoyed more luxuries and are better academically informed. Nevertheless, their seeming good fortune is not necessarily so desirable at all as their minds have not sufficiently developed to use the information and experience to make good life decisions for themselves. The super-advanced child, rather than needing less parental guidance, actually needs maximum, expert guidance from involved parents. Through technology and the media, children are hurled into a reality that is beyond the scope of their maturity level. Many of them, already scarred from living in non-nuclear families, are having more unpleasant adult realities forced upon them.

When tempted to worry about the pace of my own children’s career paths (we all do it!) I recall the very wise words of their headmaster:

The finest wine matures slowly.

Let’s give our children this chance. The joy which we will be able to take after our long wait will far outstrip the dubious enjoyment of a glass of wine drunk too early.

Sources:
The Mommy FilesGurgle.com
Belkin, Lisa: Growing up too fast. Motherlode, NYT. Published May 4, 2009.

Paulette lived in Singapore for eight years - she worked for some of these years in one of the big four accounting firms as their writer and editor. Apart from short forays into the working world, her profession is her motherhood.

1. Cheung, Jazreel: Children grow up too fast. Oracle, Vol 45, Issue 8. Published June 1 2009.
2. http://www.relaxationexpert.co.uk/HowToHelpChildrenRelax.html