What happened to childhood?

By Eileen McNamara,
Boston Globe Columnist
04/21/99

The banner hangs in my daughter's second-grade classroom that assures her and her classmates that ''mistakes are allowed here. We learn from them.''

How long will it be before we disabuse Katie and her buddies of Mrs. Clouter's quaint notion that childhood is about curiosity, that education is about trial and error, that there is no shame in failing, only in not trying?

Will she and her pals learn the truth in fourth grade when a teacher has to set aside the novel they've been reading aloud to prep for the MCAS tests? Will they figure it out in ninth grade when a tutor begins drilling them for the PSAT? Or will light dawn in 11th grade when all their parents hire private consultants to outline the optimum college application strategy?

I don't know when time runs out on Katie's lazy afternoons on her belly watching the ants on the front walk. I don't know when the deadline arrives for her to climb down from the maple tree in the yard and get focused, develop her gifts, compensate for her weaknesses and begin padding her primary school resume. But I know the clock is ticking.

I know because last week a teacher told a story about a tearful student trying to fill out an application for an elite, private school. ''They want me to describe a life-changing experience,'' she wept, ''but I'm only 13!''

I know because last week the Wall Street Journal reported that some parents are funneling their children into extracurricular activities that have a proven track record with admissions officers in the Ivy League. (Apparently, soccer is out; squash is in.)

I know because last week a Concord couple prepared a very professional press release to alert the news media that their Harvard-bound son is a very, very bright boy, indeed.

Whatever happened to my status-averse generation? Weren't we the ones who told our parents to back off, to hang loose, to chill out? Now, we've become the most uptight mothers and fathers of the American century.

Remember when parents moved into a community based on the quality of its public school system? No more. The Journal says some parents are relocating to more remote, less competitive locales, far from the Northeast, in order to maximize their child's appeal to Ivy League schools looking for ''geographical diversity.''

Remember when parents encouraged their children to play the piano to instill self-discipline and to foster a love for music? No more. Now, if she doesn't prove to be a budding Chopin by age 10, she will be switched to a more exotic instrument. ''We are always looking for oboes,'' prompts a Wellesley College official.

Remember when summer meant two weeks at a buggy YMCA camp, learning to get along with other kids in a bunk house and maybe mastering a canoe? No more. Now, junior spends his vacation, like our much-heralded Harvard-bound Concord resident, studying oceanography aboard a 127-foot schooner in Cape Cod Bay.

The irony, of course, is that we are pressuring our children at the same time we are complaining about the demands on our own adult-sized lives and fantasizing about shifting into a lower gear. We are obsessing about the impact of stress upon us, but ignoring its impact on them.

Parents, of every economic station, have always wanted the best for their children. But there is something sad, even cynical, about the game our generation is now playing. We once had a more egalitarian impulse. Remember when we believed in the inherent worth of the individual, untied to the source of his college degree or her income level? Remember when we held in contempt those with financial resources who were, in a very real sense, buying their children experiences that would give them an advantage over those of lesser means?

Have we really changed so much that we now think the best predictors of a happy life are SAT scores? Is our definition of success narrowing along with our arteries? Can't we even remember when we knew that the ability to cope with disappointment, to rebound from life's adversity, was the measure of an adult?

The stories I have read or heard in the last week are enough to make me want to bundle up my three children and head west. But The Wall Street Journal assures me I will find no solace there. The Navajo and the Cherokee nations have gotten requests from East Coast parents who think having their children ceremonially adopted by an Indian reservation might give the kids the edge they need to make it into Princeton.