Growing Up Too Fast – And What Parents Can Do About It: An Interview with Dr. Sylvia Rimm, The Cleveland Jewish News, 3/12/2010
Psychologist Dr. Sylvia Rimm, author of How to Parent so Children Will Learn and Why Bright Kids
Get Poor Grades, is speaking at The Agnon School on March 14 on “Parenting in the 21st Century: How to Raise Successful Kids with Solid Values.” CJN Family Editor Ellen Schur Brown asked Rimm how parenting is different in today’s environment.
Q: Is parenting really that different today than in the past?
A: It’s very different. I based my findings on focus groups with 5,000 students grades 3-8, and I discovered that the environment they are growing up in is more similar to the environment their parents (experienced) in high school or college.
Parents don’t get what technology is teaching their kids. Technology has really stolen their childhoods … or at least stolen their naïveté. Kids can’t miss the sex scene in movies or on TV. They see people using alcohol and drugs. I’m sure parents assume kids are a little more naïve than they are.
Q: So, parents should take away the TV?
A: Technology is exciting, and I’m not suggesting kids miss (out on) it, but parents need to put some limits on them.
On average, boys spend five times as much time on screen as they do on homework, and girls spend four times as much. And (those figures were reported) before text messaging. All that screen time has to have an impact on kids.
If you think of life as a pie, we want to fill the pie with good things so they’re not watching screens all the time. If kids have happy home lives, they are less likely to be anxious about sex, drugs or being popular.