Walking the Path of Childhood When You May Feel Pressured to Run

It's not easy to let our children be children. So often, children are seen as 'mini-adults', as if they are ready for driving their vehicle of life but simply can't reach the pedals. Most parents know that childhood is fleeting and precious, and we try to treat it with reverence and care.

But parents feel pressure, right from the start. What about the birth experience? What about breastfeeding? When did your child sit up? First word? Organic food? Enough food? Childcare? A safe neighborhood? The field of uncertainty is vast.

And then there comes the time for school. Academics are pushed earlier and earlier, despite research that this has many negative effects on children. So, you chose a Waldorf school. If you were able to join in preschool or kindergarten, you learned the value of play, movement, and outdoor time. You knew that out there, in other schools, kindergarteners were sitting at tables and learning how to do bar graphs, or flash cards. And sometimes, you may have had doubts about whether you were doing the right thing. You may have had talks with your teacher, spouse, or friends, about kindergarten and preschool. Ultimately, you saw your child fill up the wide expanse of childhood with exuberance and emotion.

The pressure some parents may feel begins to really take hold in the later grades. Parents may feel fear, anticipation, bewilderment, and anxiety. They may also (we hope!) experience great joy as their middle school student becomes more and more independent, gracious, and capable. If you happen to be the parent of an eighth grader, this is the time of year when you and your student may be experiencing anxiety about high school. Some may begin to feel anxiety about college.

Many parents experience bits and pieces of this anxiety beginning as early as their child's entry into fourth grade. It's easy to be pulled into fear-based thoughts and feelings around our children. Will they be happy, productive, and independent? Will they be kind and giving? Most of us can feel some level of fear as our children gain independence and begin to find their place in the world. But it is as important that our students be allowed to 'be here now', and live as sixth, seventh, or eighth graders, just as they were allowed their kindergarten experience.

Children who are pulled out of their developmental stage and pushed into a later stage are said to be making a withdrawal from the 'bank account' of their future. For example, young children do best when they are not asked to make decisions. Even something simple like 'Do you want to wear the blue coat, or the red coat?', has the effect of pulling the youngster out of today to take a little walk to the future, and make a withdrawal. Decisions are for older children and adults. The result can be that they end up with a very low 'bank' balance when they will need it most: those adolescent and young adult years in which they are meant to be developing independence.

Recently, a preschool class in Kent took a field trip to a college campus to show the children 'where they were headed'. This is an extreme example of the kind of pressure that parents and children are experiencing about the academic future. But there are many other, less-obvious ways that we pull our children out of their childhood on a regular basis, no matter what their age.

So when is the time to think about achievement and success, or college and career? Each family will have their own thoughts on this. It can be helpful for the adults in a child's life to be aware of where their children are developmentally. Children can't and shouldn't be sheltered from everything. What we can do is be aware of our own uncertainties about the future, and recognize them as adult fears. Remember toilet training? Or sleepless nights that seemed endless? You probably had at least one person say, 'Don't worry! Your baby will sleep through the night! Soon, you'll be lucky to get them out of bed by ten am!'.

Although it seems as though there is more and more at stake as children grow up, you have been building a path for them along the way. They will be able to walk down it, and, when they are old enough, they will run.