Anow_Notes

Quotes and Summaries for A Nation of Wimps Summary 1: pages 1-66 Parenting has been redefined in our society today. In the generation before me, children learned through experience. They were given the freedom to explore and take risks to learn more about themselves. In society today parents are creating what might be considered to be “designer” children. Parents are able to create what could be thought of as a “perfect” childhood. But a childhood without failure or sadness isn’t actually ideal at all. People learn from the mistakes they make throughout their lives. They learn that even though you made a mistake it’s ok to admit it and move on, but someone who has dealt with perfection their entire life may believe that it has completely ruined their chances at a goal that they have. For example, not getting an A in a math or science class could prevent them from getting into the college of their dreams in the future and so that dream is shattered. But more and more parents are beginning to see their child as more of a “product” or a “project” rather than a living and breathing human being. They get the chance to live vicariously through the child, sort of like life a second time around. They can make decisions that they regret not making in their own life for their child. But by not allowing the child to experience a bad decision, you take away a chance for a good learning experience that might help them later in life. Mental Health Problems are on the rise at universities in the U.S. , more and more students are cracking under the pressure of handling both school and the challenges that occur in daily life. When applying for college these “hothouse” parents ensure that their child comes across great on paper but they aren’t really to operate alone. College is supposed to be a place of exploration, a safe environment to learn both academics and discover who you are and who you want to become. Decisions like what you may want to major in should be your choice but your parents can have some input, if you feel that it’s necessary. But making a decision and deciding later that it isn’t right for you and end up changing your mind is actually ok. This happens a lot for most people and it’s not the end of the world. College is a place for experimentation, you may have wanted to be a doctor but end up as an English teacher. Changing your mind is completely normal and is a part of life, even if “hothouse” parents don’t like it. These parents are obsessed with making sure that their child will be able to continue living the life of the social class that they were born into, but they also want them to succeed and live better lives than what they have. Even though the child may have a completely different outlook on life than their parents. Quote/Response Quote & Page Number | Response | (Pg. 2) “We learn through experience, and we learn especially through bad experiences” | I really like this quote because I think it’s completely true for any event in life. You can learn from the choices you make in life, whether they be good or bad. | (Pg. 3) “Parents’ desire to protect their children is undoubtedly well-intentioned, but it is likely the single largest factor contributing to the sharp rise in mental health problems among the young and the propensity of today’s kids to stay stuck in endless adolescence.” | Parents want their children to be successful in their lives. But by keeping their child from experiencing all that life has to offer, they end up hurting them in the long run. | (Pg. 7) “Hothouse parenting has culture-wide consequences. It’s bad for the children, bad for the parents, and bad for the future of the democracy and the economy.” | Parents are raising what will soon become the future leaders of our country. They will become senators or business people and be in charge of the welfare of the U.S. and we want very responsible and well-educated people in those jobs. | (Pg. 11) “Programs like Zangle are “feeding parental obsessiveness,” insists a parent of two young girls in Birmingham, Michigan, who “forced myself to pull back and not do what everyone else does-because I’m not the one who has to prepare for college.” | “Hothouse” parents are becoming an epidemic but if we want it to stop then why do we create programs like zangle' It only makes parents more obsessed with their children when they know they can find out everything that their kid is doing. | (Pg. 14) “American parents today expect their children to be prefect-the smartest, fastest, most charming people in the universe.” | This just goes along with what used to be the “American dream”, the perfect family and the perfect life. This isn’t really achievable in every circumstance. | (Pg. 17) “We now have a generation of students who believe that you can make one mistake and ruin everything , as if their entire future rests on every single step.” | Making mistakes is just part of a person’s everyday life. You have to learn how to cope with it and move on with your life. Don’t let one mistake consume your life. | (Pg. 19) “They want discipline in schools, but they don’t want their kids to be held accountable for anything.” | This is interesting because it completely contradicts itself. “Hothouse” parents want children to be punished for bad behavior but not their child. | (Pgs. 24-25) “In the Ford-like assembly line production of successful college candidates, a child’s own goals and interests are subordinated to the counselor’s guarantee.” | Comparing the college admissions process to an assembly line is interesting because in a way it’s true. There are multiple steps that one needs to complete before being eligible for college. | (Pg. 25) “Ivy league” has become the top educational brand, the closest parents believe that they can get a guarantee of success.” | Name brands are a way of showing your social class or that you have money, it’s the same with where you go to school. If you say that you are attending an “Ivy League” people will assume that you are extremely smart and probably have a lot of money if you can afford it. | (Pg. 43) “The goal-the new American dream-is to raise a child that will make it to Princeton and go to a fancy law school.” | Our society has completely changed and evolved over the years. The American dream used to be having a good life and family but now parents want their children to have more than they have and believe that their children can reach this goal of success by means of education. | (Pg. 50) “Excellence involves enjoying what you’re doing, feeling good about what you’ve learned, and developing confidence.” ` | Excellence is more than just getting grades that your parents will approve of. You have to feel like what you are doing is for you and not just your parents. | Summary 2: pages 67-132 This section of the book was all about the education system in our country today. The education system in the U.S. has changed over the years, not really the curriculum itself but when and how it is taught. Some preschools across the country are now becoming more for what could be considered actual learning, not for gaining experience, communication skills, and playtime to prepare for elementary school and kindergarten. Elementary schools are also removing recess in order to have more learning time available for the students. Parents want their children to be prepared for all the challenges that they experience in life, so some believe that by cramming information into children at a younger age will be beneficial when the child grows up. However, taking away playtime actually has the opposite effect. During play time the child interacts with their peers, they make their own rules and games. They don’t have to be told to follow the rules because they want to play the game, so the rules are easily obeyed and have no need to be enforced by an adult. But when a problem arises the children involved can choose how to react to it, and this is problem-solving at its best. Playtime teaches the child: problem-solving, social and communication skills, and how to easily adapt to any changes that arise. All of these are necessary skills for living in the twenty-first century, and will be used throughout life. Adding more worksheets and class time isn’t a terrible thing, it could actually benefit some students. But it makes learning the playtime skills more difficult. Some schools now want parents to spend time helping the kids with their homework, but some parents end up doing it for them. This sometimes results in the child believing that they can’t accomplish a goal without their parents help; they lack a sense of self-efficacy. The child becomes more fragile and feels incapable of reaching a goal. “Overparenting” contributes to many developmental problems in young kids, but as does intrusive parenting. Intrusive parents are the parents who are completely involved in every aspect of their child’s life, an example is monitoring internet or any electronic device. This results in the child developmental mental problems later in their life. Even those with the best intentions may not be making the right choices for their child. Quote & Page Number | Response | (Pg. 67) “Although we may never recall explicitly what happened to us as infants, the experiences we have with our caregivers insinuate themselves into our emotions, our behavior, our perception, and our mental models of the world of others and of ourselves.” | It is interesting to think that the experiences we have as a newborn lays the foundation for what and how we may react to certain events later in life. | (Pg. 72) “It helps to remember that independence and autonomy are the eventual goals of child rearing.” | Over time some parents have forgotten that their supposed to prepare the child for later in life. While college is part of that, it shouldn’t be the only thing that is important. | (Pg. 74) “Early interference with a very primary system for development introduces deep disturbances in the children.” | The ways that even a newborn is treated by the parents will affect them even as they grow older, some things they may not even remember happening. | (Pg. 76) “Forget that the hazards lurking in grocery carts are virtually nil, certainly not worthy of discussion, and any minor exposure that might result would likely be beneficial, having an immunizing effect that stimulates the immune system.” | Parents are all about protecting and caring for their child. But sometimes their overprotectiveness ends up hurting the child in the long run. | (Pg. 77) “Fear is a great marketing prod to parents; it engages their laudable instinct for protection.” | This is a brilliant marketing tool because all parents want the best and protect their child, so they will pretty much buy anything to help them do it. | (Pg. 78) “Parents are more willing to point fingers Out There than to teach children how to avoid hazards that have always existed in the community and always will.” | These “hothouse” parents work hard to produce the perfect child. That when something goes wrong they refuse to believe that it was their fault and would rather blame someone else. | (Pg. 85) “Play looks like a waste of time-looks like-because it is not goal directed.” | Some parents believe that because something doesn’t look like it’s actually a learning experience, that it is a waste of time. So, their children end up missing out on a chance to learn skills that they might need when they get older. | (Pg. 92) “You’ve got to admire it-the ability of play to stimulate the maturation and transformation of the brain is concealed under the fun.” | When children play they don’t realize that they are in fact learning a lot while they are enjoying themselves. Learning is perceived as a boring experience or sort of a chore but it doesn’t have to be. | Summary 3: pages 133-198 While children do need help and guidance as they grow older, some types of help are too much and won’t teach the child to problem solve on their own first before asking for parental help. This is resulting in more and more students at the college level needing counseling and some even end up being hospitalized for mental health issues. The demand for college counseling services continues to rise each year. Times have changed since my parents attended college, in some ways not for the better. Cell phones while being an excellent way to keep in touch with others once you leave home for school. However, being so attached to what you have at home can keep you from adapting to your new surroundings and causes major homesickness. It also makes it more difficult to meet new friends if you are so focused on the ones that are from your hometown, and thus isolates you from the others at your school. While some students are dependent on their parents to help them get through school, others turn to self-mutilation, drinking, and drugs. When these new freshman arrive on campus they relish in their new found freedom, and most end up consuming a lot of alcohol within their first week of school. While drinking used to be a social activity, it’s become more of a game in which you drink as much as possible as quickly as possible. This results in the student becoming unable to make good decisions and will probably end up doing something that they later regret, multiple cases of sexual assault, and date rape. Some of these college students come from homes that had what could be considered “death-grip” parents, they believe that by coming to school they leave their problems behind. However, most find that this isn’t true and end up in counseling when they can’t adjust to not having their parents scheduling and managing every detail of their lives. Drug abuse has also become popular on college campuses; students sell their peers prescription drugs to “help” them. In our society today, caffeine is no longer the drug of choice. Students now use drugs like Ritalin or Adderall to keep them awake and focused on their schoolwork. Colleges have always had social and party scenes. In fact, this is what some students look forward to the most. But it’s becoming more and more dangerous for a student today, if they make a bad choice. Quote & Page Number | Response | (Pg. 133) “And yet a child’s very confidence and independence require a substantial dose of trail-and-error learning-and allowing a child to fail.” | If you have never experienced failure, you will never learn how to deal with it as an adult. Trial-and-error is how you learn to do something correctly after trying multiple times you learn what does and doesn’t work. | (Pg. 134) “Of course, not only is constant happiness impossible to achieve; protecting children from distress prevents them from knowing what to do when the world isn’t going their way.” | Being happy all the time just isn’t possible but that doesn’t mean that you have to be depressed all the time. Children have to learn that majority of the time you don’t get your way and you learn to move on. | (Pg. 137) “Not only do children fail to develop coping skills for life’s vicissitudes, and fall apart when they hit a speed bump, but kids come to think that something must really be wrong with them if they need so much protection.” | It’s a parent’s job to protect and teach their child but sometimes they can go overboard. But by constantly helping a child they believe that they are incapable of doing anything alone. They learn be dependent on their parents, and not be independent. | (Pg. 138) “Death-grip parenting may originate in parents’ anxieties about the world they find themselves in and a misplaced need for control in a world that seems constantly in flux, but it is encouraged by a widespread misinterpretation and misapplication of the attachment literature as it is filtered down to parents.” | The way that some parents feel about different things that occur within society today, can be passed on to their children if they so wish. This is a great example of overprotecting and controlling parent. | (Pg. 139) “The purpose of the attachment system is to free a child to explore the world on his own, figure out how to make his own way through it, and feel secure enough to take some risks.” | The entire point of the parental attachment is to let the child explore and try things alone but have someone to ask for help if needed. | (Pg. 149) “Many looked forward to college as a place where they could be free to get the help their families discouraged-or made necessary in the first place.” | These students believed that college was their way of escaping the problems going on at home, but it ended up the opposite of what they first thought and most end up in some sort of counseling. | (Pg. 155) “The shocker is, Goldberg adds, that the more alcohol abuse among college students increases, the higher their test scores or GPAs.” | This is interesting because it’s not what you would expect. Most people would think that those with lower GPAs or test scores would be the ones that abused alcohol the most. | (Pg. 163) “The very thing they need most-the freedom to experiment and make their own adaptations to life as it confronts them-is largely denied them in their overcontrolled hothouse upbringing.” | These students have lived in such a controlling household that when they arrive on campus, some go completely wild. | (Pg. 179) “Think of the cell phone as the eternal umbilicus.” | Even though the child may not even be in the same state as their parents, their parents are just a phone call away. Therefore, they can still be connected and know everything that is going on in their child’s life. | Summary 4: pages 199-264 While most “hothouse” parents have come to believe that their child needs to be happy at all times, and that doing this makes them a good parent. It is quite obvious that a divorce would affect everyone involved, including the children in the family. But now parents have begun to compete to hopefully become their child’s favorite parent, trying their hardest to make their child’s life as care-free as possible. They remove any obstacles and speed bumps that may prevent their child from doing something, basically giving them exactly what they want. However, those who work harder towards their goals, feel a greater sense of accomplishment when they reach them without anyone’s help compared to those who have things placed in their lap. The prefrontal cortex is the part of the brain that controls our emotions and feelings, it has been shown that those people who are or become depressed simply don’t use this part of the brain. Therefore, they don’t respond or have happy thoughts. The left PFC is also what keeps us motivated and having goals that we want to reach, but those who are depressed also have a hard time with these things. New studies have shown that a chemical called Dopamine, which was once thought to only be released during pleasant or happy situations, is in fact released in both unpleasant and pleasant situations. It creates the sensation of satisfaction, meaning that more is released when you reach a harder goal. It’s less of reaching the goal itself and more of the journey and the steps you took towards reaching your goal. Our brains are supposed to be able to adapt to our ever changing world, but overparenting has contributed to creating an extremely fragile generation. They will be incapable of handling the constant changes that we go through as we grow older. Some people live their lives in the pursuit of happiness, but actually choosing to live a life that has challenges and is more difficult could be more fulfilling. The path towards living life to its full extent may not be the easiest road or the road of choice, but in the long run it the best choice. By teaching kids that failure is just part of daily life and how to cope with it, they will be better prepared for the future. Overparenting is bad for both the parents and the children, it ends up putting strains on a marriage and centers life around the child. Quote & Page Number | Response | (Pg. 199) “You get the biggest high, the biggest sense of reward, when you are doing something challenging and have not yet achieved your goal.” | It’s an awesome feeling when you finally reach a goal that you have been working towards for a long time compared to just being handed something. | (Pg. 199) “In this confused climate, they come to believe that one way to make their kids happy is to make things easy for them, so they don’t have to struggle or suffer.” | Parents have now come to believe that when their child is upset it means that they are a bad parent. However, sometimes discipline is a good thing because the child will learn how to act appropriately. | (Pg. 200) “But a better equation would tell the lumpier truth: life plus doing something difficult and tolerating the discomfort of the process and the uncertainty of the outcome equals a shot at happiness; it also supplies deeper meaning and identity.” | Challenging yourself makes life more interesting and sometimes you can learn more about yourself through difficult and challenging times. | (Pg. 205) “What the brain really wants is a steady supply of information about the world and new experiences so that it can build better models of how the world works and thus make it more predictable.” | The brain is made to adapt to change, which is what our world is. By constantly learning new things, you are better prepared for what lies ahead in your life. | (Pg. 206) “Living a life with a lot of challenges and new experiences is absolutely fundamental to brain health,” says Berns.” | When the brain isn’t challenged it stops growing and you lose mental sharpness, so challenging yourself every day is actually a good thing. | (Pg. 206) “Instead of trying to get more and more of things to get happier and happier, a more rational approach is to do different things and difficult things; this is more a philosophy of self-growth.” | For some people the more material things you have, the better off you are and the happier you become. However, sometimes money isn’t everything. There are people who aren’t rich, who are perfectly content with their lives. | (Pg. 206-207) “It’s what is operating behind the widespread belief that if you grow up in a seriously troubled family-say, the child of alcoholics-or under difficult conditions of any kind, then you are virtually doomed to difficulty yourself, perhaps substance abuse problems or depression or both.” | Just because your parents are a certain way or live a certain way, doesn’t mean that you have to. It’s your choice, based on the decisions that you make throughout your life will decide what your life will be like. | (Pg. 218) “It’s simply easier to tell parents their child has a brain-based disorder than to suggest their parenting skills need an overhaul.” | “Hothouse” parents refuse to believe that they or their child are wrong. They buy into the fact that they have created the perfect child, thus they don’t need to be punished for anything. | (Pg. 229) “If you have five or six children, when you get to the younger children, those parents are pretty relaxed because they realize the kid is going to turn out pretty much the way the kid is going to turn out.” | It’s interesting to think that the more children a family has, the more the parents seem to understand “parenting” in general, rather than those who only have one child and obsess over every little detail. |