Children do not have to perform!
My daughter sat on the floor and painted a picture. She goes to preschool and sometimes then to sports, and then she likes to paint and does not talk much. But it looked rather uncomfortable: hunched over, half-shadowed, the paper directly on the floor, with stump stumps found on the shelf. "I'll turn your light on," I said, but she was not listening. "Do not you want to sit down at the table?", I asked, and because I was just there: "And take the beautiful pens that Grandpa has given you for your birthday." My daughter looked up as if I had awakened her. Then she said, "All right," and I was annoyed that it sounded so whiny. Then she took the beautiful pens and sat down at the table, staring at her paper for a very long time, instead of painting on the picture.
In retrospect, this little episode was one of the most important events in my daughter's life to date. Because at that moment something elemental has become clear to me. Namely, why our children are stressed, how much they are under pressure and what we can do about it.
Like most parents, I often get into discussions with others about how much the children in the school have to do in a short time, how many appointments they have during the week, and then that's still not enough to get them into the job market and to prepare the competition in our society.
It is easy to get in the mood: I see the dark circles under the eyes of my ten-year-old, who comes to secondary school after the holidays. I see my six-year-old sweating on the cheeks while playing violin lessons, I did not even know there were sweat glands there, but she herself said she wanted to learn the violin and we were on the waiting list for a year, so please , I can tell enough anecdotes about angry tears at homework and similar signs of wear. But is it really that difficult and exhausting to be a kid today?
There are studies and studies such as those of the German Child Protection Association, which prove that even today elementary school children feel stressed and under pressure. There are long-term international studies showing that children today feel more under pressure than before. My wish would have been to refute that to make it easier for all of us parents. For how comforting it would be to say that back when we were children we were under equally great pressure, and that we coped with it. Or something like that. But it's not like that: I did not find any experts who would have told me that today's kids do not have it any harder than we used to.
On the contrary. Friederike Otto, director of the Research Association for Family Health at the Hannover Medical School, says that children are under more pressure today because "parents today have much greater access to all areas of children's lives, they exercise much greater control". The developmental psychologist Inge Seiffge-Krenke of the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz is of the opinion that children are under more pressure today because "their meaning has grown incredibly": "Children today have the task of increasing the self-esteem and status of the children That's why the children's school performance has become so important. "
Michael Schulte-Markwort, Director of the Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at the University Clinic Hamburg-Eppendorf, has an even more fundamental thesis: He blames the "pervasive economisation of society" on how much pressure there are on children today: the fact that parents are now and children have to do much more, because every aspect of our lives is subordinated to economic profit. Even in elementary school it says that you have to get fit for high school, because otherwise you can not find a job, and if you have one, it's all about avoiding costs and making a profit.
Michael Schulte-Markwort underpins this with many examples from his daily routine in the clinic, but in fact the language and principles of business management are already encountered in elementary school: Even in elementary school, children have goal-setting discussions with their teacher, as we do with our boss.
Maybe the children are sorry for us because their situation reminds us of our own. They should move more, concentrate, sometimes hold out and finish, they should develop individually, but not out of line, and they should just be happy. Just like us. And we know that all this is impossible to do. That's why we treat our children with compassion and say, "Bad how much the children are under pressure today.
Parents have to do more today - children too.
The child psychiatrist Schulte-Markwort says that this is "intrinsic pressure", ie: pressure that comes from within. The children have internalized the needs of the school, society and parents so that they drive and whip themselves. "Twenty years ago, I always had parents sitting here who wanted to know what they could do to make sure their child finally worked and learned," says Schulte-Markwort. "Today I'm dealing with parents who want to know what they can do to make sure their child does less."
Pedagogue Friedrike Otto says that "parents' insecurity is difficult": "The parents who have children today grew up with upheavals in education and in society, on the one hand away from repressive pedagogy, because these parents are themselves On the other hand, there has been a social pressure that children have to be successful, because otherwise they will come economically under the wheels and the parents must be successful. " So there is an irresolvable contradiction: between the ideal that "everything should be very individual and enjoyable, even in school, and in partnership in education," and on the other hand, the fear of not nurturing enough of the children and not enough to stimulate performance ,
The developmental psychologist Inge Seiffge-Krenke says that parents in this field of tension often and too much to the means of the so-called "psychological control" resort: "The parents do not educate directly, but indirectly, by not telling the children, do this, Do not do that, but: Would not it be nice if you do it this way or that? Or: That annoys me or makes me sad, if you do that and that And this psychological control has, we know from investigations now pretty much, almost as damaging consequences as if the children are being controlled authoritatively. "
Perhaps it seems unjust or tantalizing to talk primarily about how we parents cause the children themselves the pressure they are under. But I am tired of attuning to the lamentations about school politics. To be honest, I find the idea of frustratingly embarking on school reform reforms more than the idea of self-reforming myself and my behavior. I have a more direct approach and do not have to deal with so many economic and political interest groups. Let's take it for granted that we can focus on what we know very well, in a manageable area: working on ourselves, on us as parents.
Basically, we do a lot right first: the experts praise us for how caring we modern parents behave in contrast to previous generations and how thoughtful and eloquent our children are. "But if you really want to change something," says child psychiatrist Schulte-Markwort, "then we have to change, especially the high-achievers need to change, we can not keep the pressure from society away from the children, and when we say relax now, then the kids do three times as much, we have to show it to the kids instead, by checking our own performance expectations, ie how much we work, how much we groan it's like eating: it must be gummy bears and salad, and also in terms of achievement, do the children have to learn from us that there is both fun in learning, enjoyment of achievement, but also in idleness, lounging, singing and playing. "
We may be parents who teach children to laze rather than foreign languages and Chinese characters
In order to facilitate this, the pedagogue Friederike Otto recommends "looking beyond the horizon": "To make aware that most professional biographies are far from straightforward and without breaks, as is always the case, and make it clear that the If my child does not go to high school today, will it become homeless and criminal in 20 years or not? The most important message that you can give the child is: You also have to have one Turning gears back on, and: That's it, so it's an optimism for the future that we, as a family, stick together. "
Part of that, says developmental psychologist Seiffge-Krenke, is to let the kids do something on their own. And it helps to draw clear boundaries between the generations. "Parents need to learn borderline strength," Inge Seiffge-Krenke says, "We are parents, and we do that and that, and you are children, and you are responsible for other things." Not only so that children can grow on "mild conflicts" with their parents, but also to keep things away from the children: because we can not be our children's best friends, our children do not have to worry if we have pressure and anger in the job.
If what the experts say is true, then we may seem to be more careless and at first sight almost worse parents than we have ever allowed ourselves to be.We may be parents arguing with the children, parents who do not control whether and how the children do the homework, but who help them to occasionally make fives straight. Parents who teach the children how to lazy and the frugality instead of Chinese characters and foreign languages even in kindergarten.
So we can get out of the nerve-wracking contest, who best supports his child, who is most involved in school, yes, we can relax, because it helps more if we take the afternoon off and ask: Come you with? And above all and more: when we recognize where the children have already created islands for themselves to escape pressure. All we have to do then is just leave them alone instead of always mending them.
My daughter had found her perfect island: alone on the floor, in bad light, ergonomically devastating, with ole pens, but she was for and with herself and completely at rest. Until I came with all the good advice and the nice pens of grandpa. Instead, I breathe deeply next time, lie down on the sofa and do nothing.
