On Curious George, orange football suits and being a parent | Just a Little Old

When my stepson Andy Barker was 4 years old, his favorite toy was a Curious George doll. One day, he left Curious George at the library. Tina told him he would have to call the library and see if they had Curious George. At that time, Andy was called Andrew and he had trouble saying his Rs. Tina dialed the phone, gave it to her son, and he said, “This is Ahndwew Bahka. I left my Cuweious Gawge at the libwehwee.” Happily, the library had Curious George and all was well with the world.

When my son David was 4 years old his favorite outfit was an orange football suit. One day we took him to a hockey game at Bowdoin College. The place was packed. David, being David, wanted to walk all around the arena, so we let him do so. We could see the bright orange suit moving through the crowd as he circled the stands. He returned safely and all was well with the world.

Recent news articles brought these memories to mind. Coaches in Maine and across America have quit because of the hassle of dealing with pushy parents. Many parents chew out coaches because they don’t think their kid is getting enough playing time or because the coach just doesn’t know how to coach. These same pushy parents yell at umpires for a “bad” call, thereby setting a horrible example for their young athletes.

Listen to what retired teachers say about the increased tendency for parents to question their child’s grade or anything else for that matter. They say they often felt unsupported by school administrators, hampering their ability to enforce discipline.

A quick search of the internet will confirm the reality of these disturbing trends in the classroom and on the playing field.

Parental over-involvement doesn’t end upon high school graduation. I belong to a Facebook Bowdoin parent group. I’m struck by the number of parents of entering freshmen who ask detailed questions of other parents about what their child should bring to college or expect upon arrival, etc., etc., etc. Hey, parents, what is your student going to do when he/she doesn’t have you running interference for him/her on campus?

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A piece in the New York Times entitled “Aw, It’s Baby’s First A.I. Surveillance System” has a subhead: “Nanit and other start-ups want to track your children through the night — and soon, for much longer than that.” The opening paragraph sets the stage: “For all but a few nights of my first child’s life, her sleep has been recorded and analyzed by the Nanit Smart Baby Monitor System. A sleek white camera, bolted to the wall, points straight down at her body. High-definition footage is beamed to a server, where machine-learning algorithms log her movements and the precise moments her eyes open and close. The data are distilled into charts and insights that my husband and I review in the Nanit app: a daily ‘sleep efficiency’ score, from zero to 100; minutes until sleep onset; the number of times we were needed over the course of a night.”

Ouch. Call me a dinosaur, but isn’t this going too far? Such technology is expensive so only the wealthiest parents can afford the indulgence. Ironically, the same issue of the New York Times ran a piece about how the nation’s poorest families can’t afford even the barest essentials. By the same token, costly “concierge healthcare plans” enable wealthy families to have immediate access to healthcare services 24 hours a day, while millions of Americans can’t even afford health insurance. But income disparity is a topic for another day.

Some observers note that the COVID crises increased the helicopter parent phenomenon. That may be true. It certainly hampered the growth process of millions of the nation’s young people. Moreover, parents in my day didn’t have to deal with the challenge of kids fixated on their smartphones or the possibility that some whacko would shoot-up a school with an AR-rifle.

I firmly believe that reading to your child every night is one of the best things parents can do. A survey in Education Week reported that only 36% of parents with children 5 to 7 say they regularly read to their children. Experts say that 3-year-olds should have no more than one hour of day of screen time, yet many 3-year-olds spend two or three hours or more a day glued to their devices.

Admittedly, parenting has become more difficult over the years, but today’s parents would do well to remember some basic principles of parenting: You are your kid’s support, their North Star, their rock. You are not their lifetime boss. You are not there to protect them from the world; you are there to prepare them for the world. Cheer them on; be there during the difficult times. Sooner or later you have to let go, preferably sooner rather than later. He/she is on Earth to fulfill his/her dreams, not yours.

Back to Curious George and the orange football suit. Andy and David are doing just fine. A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of North Carolina, Andy created an innovative educational program in Vermont entitled the Burlington City and Lake Semester. Today he works for the Vermont Community Foundation. A Princeton graduate in engineering and computer science, David has had a very successful 37-year career in technology, first at Microsoft and now at Amazon.

My other son (Jon) and my other stepson (Ed) have also led fulfilling productive lives. Incidentally, not once did Tina or I nag our sons about doing homework. Nor did we complain to a single teacher or coach. Granted, we may have been simply lucky. There are no guarantees in life or in parenthood.

David Treadwell, a Brunswick writer, welcomes commentary and suggestions for future “Just a Little Old” columns at [email protected].

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