OCR Text |
Show of top performance. (2) If he's interested in joining a community group, back him up to the hilt. (3) Develop backbone about saying "no" when you feel that something some-thing he wants is really inappropriate. Weigh his requests re-quests fairly, for it may do more harm than not to isolate him from his group? (4) Keep channels of communication communica-tion open, so that he feels free to bring you his confidences, when he chooses, but don't pressure him. (5) Accept the growth and changes that come at various stages of his development. (6) Encourage enjoyable family doings do-ings that include all ages. A child who feels inadequate in his own group often takes heart from seeing that life is an orderly progression: progres-sion: the little kids are where he once was; the big ones are where he's now heading; sooner or later they all grow up and so will he. Don't Rush Them Out of , Childhood "Kids should act like kids, not imitation grownups," writes Jean K. Komaiko in Parents' Magazine. Young people today are being pushed too early and too fast into patterns of behavior many sizes too big for them. Parents must take some responsibility for allowing their children to be pushed into these revved-up social patterns. "Jet propulsion out of childhood and into mock maturity is often as ridiculous as it is said," she says, citing as an example, a birthday party for 8 year olds with corsages, mock cocktails and paid entertainment. True, kids of 11, 12 and 13 have always had their problems, but today the social pressures imposed on kids from the outside seem to conspire to wring the spontaneity sponta-neity out of their lives. Let children enjoy their youth. Don't spoil the natural rhythm of their development by expecting too much of them and for them. "When children are pushed too quickly out of late childhood, the period when boys and girls can best under study the roles they'll one day fill as men and women, they are cheated of the time of life during which they must test themselves as individuals, as members of their sex, as future citizens," the author contends. Overnight, instead, they must take up pretending to be adults because be-cause the gang or their parents expect it. Instead of learning by growing and experiencing, they must play the part by ear, and it's small wonder the performance is often off key. Mrs. Komaiko quotes psychoanalyst Helen Ross, who says, "Forced growth is nearly always tragic. What children miss along the way, they try to get later, and usually can only snatch at. They need time to enjoy the appropriate. It should be fun to grow up, but it isn't (when a child misses out on large pieces of childhood." The pre-teen age and stage is painful for slow growers. grow-ers. Boys, particularly, suffer during this time. Slower to develop, clumsier and shorter than the girls their age, they are ill equipped to handle ordinary social intricacies, let alone the curren tpressures imposed by adults. Even the pace setters, the boys who choose "steadies" and the girls who willingly go along, can be miserable, too. What can parents do? Dr. Irene Josselyn, an outstanding out-standing child psychiatrist, says, "If parents enriched children's lives, gave them worth while values and standards, stand-ards, I doubt that we'd have so much worrying to do about the pseudo-sophistication on the outside." The article makes the practical suggestions for giving giv-ing a child leeway to grow a this own pace and assuring him the full childhood to which he is entitled: (1) Encourage your child to develop skills and hobbies because they are enjoyable, not with expectations |