time magazine play

i was reading "the overparenting of kids" article on the cover of TIME (November 2009) issue and kind of giggled. i understand that overparenting is now a "bad" thing to do, just like underparenting. it never ceases to amaze me how extreme we play in our culture. this OR that. over OR under. either way, it gets a cover article and judgment. i read it as a parent and i also read it as a person who likes to observe life. the nitty gritty is what i am interested in these days, not the band aids or the newest label we like to call ourselves as parents or just adults. okay maybe we overparent. maybe we live our childrens lives without giving them the opportunity to live theirs. maybe we tell them they will fall, get hurt, fail in that class or not be a doctor way before they even get to experience THAT. i understand why. i may not be a practicing over parent, however i understand it.

the CORE of this is where is this need to overparent coming from? to be perfect? to not make a mistake? or is it because we want to LOVE? or both? i feel the reason why we want our children to live hand sanitizing lives to perfection is because of our own beliefs about ourselves. we feel maybe that we are not enough. that our children may begin to "define" our greatness so we then can feel better and LOOK better to the world.

but is this true? if our children hand sanitize and dont drink from certain cups, go to spanish class by the age of 3..etc are WE better for that?

i question WHO we are overparenting. i question WHO we are underparenting. It is OURSELVES we are doing this to. we are wanting to be cleaner, smarter, better, etc...

and all we are doing is passing this baton to children who may or may not prefer it. TIME states this is causing a backlash, but i disagree. it is causing a GIFT for us to begin to SEE the mirrors in which our children ARE to us.

what we teach- we ARE.

look at yourself first...

and then just be.

be a parent who may not use sanitizer after the playground, or may not have 5 different language classes for your kid by the age of 10 or may not choose to play mozart repeatedly while pregnant.

the bottom playful line is: WE ARE WHO WE ARE. it is time to ACCEPT ourselves so we can ACCEPT our children and THAT is a GREAT headline i would like to see on TIME

"Kids feel accepted and so do their PARENTS"

rock on.