Trying to Do it All

I have heard it time and again.  "How can teachers expect my child to do homework when he has (fill in the blank with un-criticizable extracurricular activity)?" Whether the child is on a traveling soccer team or the lead in a play in addition the part time job they just have to have because Johnny needs money to buy his own video games, the complaint is always about the school work.  When I point out that these are choices, I am the heartless teacher who can't possibly understand what it is like because I don't have children of my own.

While I don't know the pain of a crying child at the dinner table, I do have experience with over a thousand children.  I have seen the trends of almost two decades of educational philosophy and have watched as the culture of parenting has shifted.  Parents once believed that school was a student's job and that they shouldn't have jobs during the school year; now many parents believe their child should work as many hours as they can get in order to have their own money.  Parents once kept their student from going to a game if their grades weren't at an acceptable level; now many parents believe the teacher should be pressured to change the grade so that their child can play a game.  We have moved from extra curricular activities as secondary to school work to school work being secondary at best (it might fall a few more spots if the student is especially social).  This might be okay if the parents in question weren't also pressing their kids to take a high load of AP classes and spend time on SAT/ACT prep classes so that they can get into a top college.  Then, we are shocked when kids have anxiety.

In short, our culture has decided to push our kids to have it all.

This. Is. Not. Okay.
It's just not.
Stop it.