Overachieving Kids
http://thekojonnamdishow.org/shows/2012-10-25/overachieving-kids
It's something of a cliche that kids today are overscheduled, grade-obsessed and under enormous pressure to land at the right school. Anxiety and depression are soaring among kids, including high achievers who believe they're only as good as their last success. We ask two experts how parents can rethink priorities and raise happy, well-adjusted kids.
Guests
Judith Warner
Columnist for Time.com; author, “ We’ve Got Issues: Children and Parents in the age of Medication,” and Perfect Madness: Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety”
Madeline Levine
Psychologist; Author, "The Price of Privilege" and "Teach Your Children Well: Parenting for Authentic Success"
Comments
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My kids go to a Sudbury Valley Model school which has no set curriculum, no grades, no homework (unless they've joined a class asked for by the students and the teacher assigns homework and even then, if they don't do it, they're not penalized). It's all about self motivation, interest, and responsibility for self. Everything is up to them. It's democratically run (by students and staff) and self governed through a judicial committee that meets daily to hear grievances with each other (all students serve like jury duty). They learn who they are and how to interact with others (the soft skills your guest is talking about). There's very little bullying and problems between students are usually resolved in a way that the kids involved end up being friends afterwards (at least in my experience). There was no other choice for me than to find an alternative paradigm and when I hear others complain about what their children go through I wonder why others don't refuse this kind of life and find an alternative for their children as well. In my opinion it's all about fear and lack of trust in our children.
YES! I'm listening to the idea of resilience you are talking about now. My kids' school allows them to fail and have that be OK...traditional school absolutely has a major consequence for failure and we learn to be perfectionists and hard on ourselves and not allow ourselves to fail. This AM, as I was making my (almost) 9 year old her Halloween costume and made a mistake I had to rip out, she said, "Mom, you learn a lot from making mistakes".
PS...video games are also another way kids are allowed to fail, get up and try again, over and over....I think that may be a major appeal (subconsciously)
Fairhaven School in Upper Marlboro and Arts & Ideas School in Baltimore are two K-12th grade Sudbury schools in Maryland where students are never bogged down with homework, where play and outside time are valued.Teachers are guides and the learner is fully engaged because they are intrinsically motivated to learn what they want when they want to learn it. Sudbury schools redefine success by allowing young people to access their inner strengths.
Great show.
Did anyone catch the name of the Rockville school that Alan referred to?
The school Alan was talking about is called School for Tomorrow.
Thank you, T!
The school is called Fairhaven School in Upper Marlboro, MD. Check it out! Thanks!
www.fairhavenschool.com
School for Tomorrow is a private school in Rockville, Maryland serving grades 5-12. If you'd like more information about School for Tomorrow, please contact us at kmurphy@schoolfortomorrow.net or info@schoolfortomorrow.net.
We're always happy to have visitors, and we accept mid-year transfer students all year.
What drove the creation of SFT – and continues to drive us as we evolve – is the reality that the youth in this country are in need of a new type of education suitable for the opportunities and challenges of today's and tomorrow's ever-changing world.
For more information, check out our website: www.schoolfortomorrow.net.
Could part of the reason parents focus on their kids so strongly is family-size. I have 4 brothers - my mom didn't have time to focus....