2001 Childhood Lost
Speaker: Dr. David Elkind

November 9, 2001

Anger, illness, and even suicide result when children are pushed to achieve or behave outside their normal level of development, Dr. David Elkind told nearly 200 Alliance members and guests at the third annual Alliance symposium, Childhood Lost. The symposium was held November 9 at the Grandover Resort in Greensboro during the North Carolina Medical Society Annual Meeting.

Dr. Elkind, professor of child development at Tufts University, is the author of the seminal work, The Hurried Child.

The book was the first to focus directly on the perils of pushing children academically, socially, or emotionally. “Children need to feel important and cared for,” he said. In today’s society, he pointed out, even geographic space has expanded to serve adult needs, while space for children’s activities has decreased. Similarly, the range of acceptable behavior for adults has expanded, while the normal range of behavior for children has decreased.

Dr. Elkind observed that several societal trends are hurrying children. Academic testing of very young children can result in labeling them as failures or incorrectly diagnosing them with ADHD. Preschool children should only be expected to master these tasks: listening, taking turns. and completing simple tasks. If older children are not ready to take numerous advanced placement courses, they should not be expected to do so to achieve admission to a prestigious institution. "There are hundreds of excellent colleges, a college for every student," he said.

Dwight Whitted, NC Children's Trust Coordinator and NCMS Alliance Vice-President for Health Affairs, Virginia Scanlan.

Media violence is exposing children to material that they are not prepared to process emotionally. Repeated images of the collapse of the World Trade Towers and of the war are damaging and frightening them. Parents should control their children’s access to the media and reassure them that they are safe from the bad people who did these things, he said.

    Technology is soaking up family time. The best preparation for a bad experience is a good experience,” he said. However, children will only learn from their successes if parents take the time to talk to them about their daily lives. Even the most well-educated parents can make mistakes by expecting kids to move along a culturally defined path of maturation which they are not ready for, Dr. Elkind said. Citing his own experience, he told the story of his son who dropped out of college, much to his father’s dismay. After repeated threats, which Dr. Elkind recognized as inappropriate, he allowed his son to go to work for a computer firm, where he has excelled. At the request of his employers, the young man has now returned to school, where he has focused on academic work that will further what is already a superb career.

Dr. Michael Lancaster, a Raleigh psychiatrist, served as moderator of the symposium. Honorary chairman of the event was Dr. Barbara Kuligowski, consultant for the NC Department of Public Instruction Even Start program, which sends functionally illiterate mothers to school with their young children. Lucy Roberts, chief early childhood consultant at DPI, paid tribute to Dr. Kuligowski for 23 years of professional life devoted to children.

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