Excerpt from Nurture the Nature

Excerpted with permission of the publisher John Wiley & Sons, Inc. from NURTURE THE NATURE. Copyright © 2007 by Michael Gurian. This book is available at all bookstores, online booksellers and from the Wiley website at www.wiley.com, or by calling 1-800-225-5945.

We’re conditioned to create families whose standard of success is how a child will function as a competitor at the highest level of the competitive hierarchy. In the shadow of this stressor, we hyperprepare children from prebirth for entrance in the “the best” college or highest-paying job even though we know that (1) most children will not achieve this top-end acquisition, nor need to in order to be successful and happy; and (2) that we and all other adults end up most successful and happy by living and growing in sync with who we really are, not by making huge amounts of money or fitting a rigid mold.

The disconnect between our individual natures as growing human beings and the monolithic expectations of society causes both children and parents to become anxious. Parents become anxious not only to make sure their kids are recognized as super-smart achievers who conform to “perfect” standards of financial success, interpersonal relationships, and self-esteem but also to define the “perfect” child by whatever latest definition has come down the pike.

When we feel we have failed as parents in our society, it is often because our children don’t do well on a kindergarten entrance exam, or get what they think is enough ice time on the Pee Wee youth hockey team. These “small slights” come to hurt immeasurably; further, the information that creates the sense of failure is impossible to keep up with.

A prime example is the issue of breast-feeding. It was “out” for over a decade. Now it’s back. Another example: sleeping with your child is out now, but once was encouraged. Lately, the huge growth of the Baby Einstein-type tapes has swept the country, creating new anxiety among parents who want to buy more and more of them to make sure their kid grows up smart. But stay tuned, because recent studies show that some of the claims for these tapes are unrealistic; perhaps next year this fad will become obsolete also. High-stress consumerism has also infiltrated every aspect of our society. The constant push to buy, buy, buy the next best thing for your baby/toddler/child fuels and feeds on the social trends parenting system.

Aren’t we constantly deluged with the latest trends in parenting and relational development? One day we read that parents don’t matter—it’s only friends who influence our impressionistic young kids; the next day we hear that constant emotion talk or giving kids their space or tough-love intervention is the only and best way to parent, or that if we don’t play Mozart in the nursery, our kids will fall behind. We see the morning TV shows, and every year dozens of new books are published, adding to the burden and stress, piling on more pressure and anxiety. Many of these books contain wonderful insights, but they add up to a kind of “nervous wreck” atmosphere and to off-center parenting. We are constantly being told how to be perfect parents and have perfect winner kids, and meanwhile we are exhausted.

How do we parents keep up? We can’t. So we constantly fail. And in raising kids through the following of social trends, we tend to listen less to wise ancestors or our own instincts and instead take our cues from test makers, psychological theorists, personality-based gurus, morning show sound bites, and magazine advice columns regarding all children in general. Our children thus get pulled in many directions, often far away from their own core nature.

One clear example of the symptoms of social trends anxiety has been the school system. Filled as it is with wonderful teachers and many other excellent resources, our educational system—primary and secondary—is so swamped with children (even in crowded preschools) that it must socialize boys and girls with differing learning styles as though they were all of one single type in terms of their social capabilities, socioeconomic status, and psychological makeup. Many of the children educated through this approach are often unable to achieve basic levels of reading, writing, math, and science learning; even worse, many with naturally diverse learning styles are pathologized, labeled, medicated, and ultimately lost. They are captives of a monolithic system that many of them simply come to hate.

Losing the Nature of the Child

By participating in the social trends parenting system, we are taking our eyes off of what our children, our family, our schools really need. The outside-in model of society-as-guide for parenting cannot do otherwise than take our eyes off the deep and complex nature of our child. Although setting high goals for our kids is crucial for their thriving, what is problematic is the lack of attention to understanding and nurturing who our specific children really are—so that we can help them set the right high goals for themselves!

Certainly, many social trends are wonderfully helpful. Many parenting experts are immensely helpful. Some surveys are very helpful, as I found in providing surveys and results in this chapter: we need to listen when parents talk. But in overrelying on social trends to help us raise kids—and in neglecting the individual and inborn nature of each child—we are overstressing millions of children toward anxiety and other disorders, toward painful labels and misdiagnosis, toward antisocial behavior and unhappiness. It’s time for parents to act on behalf of the human child in revolutionary ways.