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I think much of this plays into the my child can do no wrong syndrome. We don't know our neighbors like we used to. We have our guard up.
You have a point. Isolation could have something to do with why so many parents today believe that their children are blameless. Even though we know our neighbors well--have lived here a long time--most of us are not in similar stages of life. We have neighbors who are retired, who have young children, who have teenagers. Our parents lived in neighborhoods where everyone was in about the same lifecycle stage....and a lot more mothers were home to connect with other families. Our parents had their own friends, and they didn't rely on their kids for social connections. So maybe this translates into needing to constantly have their kids' backs, without realizing the down side of it.
No, not at all. I know full well the point I'm trying to make.
I think it's our lack of need for our neighbors that has created the us or them mentality that leads to "not my child" syndrome. As long as we view it as us vs. them, nothing will change. Technolgy only serves to deepen this divide. It has to do with how society is structured these days not with whether we plan block parties.
My point is that you can either choose to sit at home in isolation and long for the good old days, chatting about it on the internet or you can choose to make the effort and take the time to get to know your neighbors and develop meaningful relationships with them. Friends lean on each other, as do neighbors who have real relationships with one another. I gave concrete examples of how neighbors have helped us out and vice versa.
As for parents thinking that their children can do no wrong; I think that some people are just defensive in general and in denial.
Yes, but the difference is that today it is by choice. So it's a feigned interdependency. In the past, it was a real interdependency. There is a difference between choosing something and needing it. If you choose it, you can unchoose it at any time. If it's needed, you don't have a choice. Necessity forces your hand. THIS is what my dd would have benefitted from. Choosing to grow our own vegetables and make things at home and homeschooling would not have helped her. NEEDING to grow our own vegetables and NEEDING to make things to barter with would have. Without that NEED for others and the services they provide, it's difficult for them to learn to give. They can be made to go through the motions but they don't learn the benefit of giving. That lesson is learned through true INTERDEPENDENCY. I don't care how many gardens you grow, you can't create that in this society. Everything that neighbors were once NEEDED for is now available on the shelves of stores or from contractors. You can pretend things haven't changed but you're just preetending. What my dd needs is to find herself in a situation where she, truely, needs the help of others. So far, that hasn't happened. So she does not form long term relationships.
As to tying this into the OP, I think part of our problem is that we don't need each other anymore. Each family is an island unto itself, or can be if it wants to be. Knowing we don't need others and not needing them is isolating. I think the my child can do no wrong mentality stems from an us and them mentality. There's our families and then there's others. We stand by our own. Maybe it's because we do live in isolation these days. Maybe it's because our children's behavior, in public, is now the only proof of our good parenting that others see. I can tell you that people don't see what we've been doing with dd #1. They only see her behavior and it reflects badly upon us (how many times has someone dragged her issues into a discussion of parenting here??? as if they were due to bad parenting???).
I don't agree. I participate in a "barn raising" almost every weekend. A bog group of us will show up at my parent's/Sister's/ friend's/neighbor's house and help with projects that need to be done like fixing a roof, building a garden, installing a sprinkler system, replacing windows, laying sod, raking, and a million other things. We do not hire out our work because we cannot afford to. We also like spending the time together to get it done.
I am also very close to my neighbors. I have gotten out of bed at 2am because a neighbor's kid is being rushed to the hospital and I run to the house to take care of the other kids. In the last 2 weeks, I have driven a neighbor to the store when her car broke down, helped plan and run a birthday party at the beach (after driving half of the guests there), helped another neighbor in her vegetable garden, watched all of the neighbor kids playing outside while sitting out on my driveway with other neighbors just talking, driven neighbor kids to school, baked cookies with a neighbor girl, DH taught a neighbor boy how to throw a football, and quite a few other things. In that same time, I had an emergency where DD's after school care was closed for a few days and I could not take off of work, so the naighbors all worked together and came up with a schedule to take DD to school and pick her up after school and watch her for a few hours until I could get home from work. Another neighbor knew I was having a very bust couple of weeks with DH out of town, so she made dinner for DD and I and brought it over one night. I could go on with the things that have happened in just the past couple of weeks, but hopefully I have made my point by now.
I just flat out do not agree that all families are completely secluded from the world and this is causing the "not my child" syndrome. I actually have only known one woman who acted that way and I think that was mainly because she had a lot of other problems in her life and couldn't take any more going wrong. I don't think the problem is as wide-spread as some people think it is.
This is all my opinion though and your know what they say about opinions.
Lots and for lots of reasons. First, from age 5 to age 18 children spend about 25% of their waking time in school so parents have the other 75%, potentially, available. With less work to do at home and fewer children per household, it is very likely that parents have time to lavish on their kids even if they do go to school 7 hours a day. The average school aged child has 5100 waking hours per year (assuming they sleep 10 hours a night which is a lot). They spend about 1260 hours in school. There's lots of time left over.
I think kids are isolated with their mothers because that is what I see around me. Why do you think they have mommy and me classes and play groups? Because we know we're isolated but they don't change that we are isolated. They are just bandaids. We leave our homes, participate in a contrived group and then go back to our homes. Most likely, our kids won't even remember the kids they went on play dates with in 2 years. Play dates are just a temporary fix. If you go back to the village, kids grew up with a play group and were raised in a group setting. Small towns come closest to this but even there we're transient enough that we leave groups behind.
Anyway, I think much of this plays into the my child can do no wrong syndrome. We don't know our neighbors like we used to. We don't grow roots like we used to. We don't need our neighbors like we used to. We have our guard up. We protect ourselves. I protect myself even here. I will never reveal the true nature of dd's problems again because I'd be attacked. Someone would tell me what a bad mother I am. It's happened before and I've had to ask the mods to delete the posts. I've learned that in today's society, you can't ask for help with your kids because you will be blamed for their issues. I can see why people have not my child syndrome. I don't but I will never again ask for help with my kids. I learned my lesson. I'm on my own.
This, I completely understand. I have been there....I have done that. I have been judged, by people who "thought" they knew what was "really going on"....they were wrong and it only made my child worse. Meanwhile, I was being judged and persecuted by people who only had a tiny bit of information and formulated the rest.
Too many people (I've done it too ), hear about a child misbehaving and/or acting out, and immediately think, "Well the parents MUST be doing something wrong, or they're kid wouldn't be acting like this!" Well, people can be very, very mistaken. There are born sociopaths and psychopaths out there. Wired badly from birth. Compulsive liars who lie for no apparent reason. I DO get what you're saying.
But they don't give a crap what their kid did. They just want to save face. I used to work in a school plagued with discipline problems. I hated calling home because about half the time, I got told that I caused the problem.
Uninvolved parents are bad too but the excuse makers actually fuel their children's misbehavior. The child knows that mom will blame the school not them and feels enabled. Kids with uninvolved parents feel powerful as well. They know nothing is going to happen to them at home even if you call. Neither situation is good.
So involved parents are bad and so are uninvolved parents? I guess we all suck at being parents no matter what we do.
I agree that technology is trying to fill the void but that's part of the problem. Facebook has become the new back fence. Haven't tried skype yet. I still have an old fashioned monitor with no camera...I need to upgrade. It would be nice to see my best friend when I talk to her. She moved out of state several years ago. However, none of this recreates the interdependency of years past or fixes the type of isolation that is creating the us or them mentality that is leading to NOT MY CHILD syndrome.
Being ten years out of date would tend to skew one's appreciation of technology, I suppose. (Wondering parenthetically if access to up-to-date technology isn't one of the things that skews likelihood of success? My school system seems to think so, and seems to think it's related to employment-related SES. Go figure.)
Back on point, though-- technology is a tool, not the devil itself. Certainly, if you're inclined to be the sort who lives in Mummy's basement and never communicates but with your MMORPG guild, it can be isolating-- though one could argue that those individuals would 40 years ago have been living in Mummy's basement getting stoned to the Byrds. Technology can also be used to firm up meetings/playdates/study plans; Skype (which costs nothing) replaces the dollar-a-minute long distance of my youth, affording more frequent contact with loved ones across the country (and is a definite improvement over 150 years ago, when to say someone had "gone west" rendered them as good as dead to their families). And it changes nothing about whether I make the effort to take oatmeal cookies down to Miss Josephine (because I know she doesn't like nuts, and knew that long before we'd lived here seven years).
I would submit that isolation is an individual decision, not related to whether or not a community is needed, but related entirely to one's decision to absent herself, physically or emotionally, from that community. Further, while it may play itself out most recently on an "us vs the world" track in school admissions, dance class solos, or other "Mompetition" venues, it's been around as long as gold miners have been jumping claims, Germans scapegoated Jews for economic difficulties, or MacDonalds and Campbells fought over the same scrawny sheep. No doubt even then, there was a mother claiming Fergus was a far better sheep thief than Malcolm, and why did the chieftain take him along instead of her boy? The difference then (besides the fact that women died at appallingly young ages and didn't get so good at it) was that it's a lot harder to be competitive for ten kids than it is for one or two. If Fergus is the eighth of eleven children, it's hard enough to even notice he's adept at sheep-stealing, let alone care if he's better than Malcolm down the glen.
I would submit that isolation is an individual decision, not related to whether or not a community is needed, but related entirely to one's decision to absent herself, physically or emotionally, from that community. Further, while it may play itself out most recently on an "us vs the world" track in school admissions, dance class solos, or other "Mompetition" venues, it's been around as long as gold miners have been jumping claims, Germans scapegoated Jews for economic difficulties, or MacDonalds and Campbells fought over the same scrawny sheep. No doubt even then, there was a mother claiming Fergus was a far better sheep thief than Malcolm, and why did the chieftain take him along instead of her boy? The difference then (besides the fact that women died at appallingly young ages and didn't get so good at it) was that it's a lot harder to be competitive for ten kids than it is for one or two. If Fergus is the eighth of eleven children, it's hard enough to even notice he's adept at sheep-stealing, let alone care if he's better than Malcolm down the glen.
Great observation and I totally agree.
I'm also stealing "Malcom Down The Glen" as a song title. I hear pipes and fiddles and a yearning for love lost.
I don't know why people think their kids have to be put on a fake pedestal. You can adore them AND see things they do wrong. Even a kid who makes a wrong turn here an there give you many reasons to think they are wonderful. It's things like this (meaning the original post) that make me happy to have waited until later in life to have my little guy. IMO it's younger parents who are more prone to it. I was more competitive when younger and had much more to prove. Now I'm more mature and secure. I'm happy to just love him to death and not insist that he's faster, smarter and better than other babies.
My husband and I secretly think he's much more adorable than any other child who has ever or will ever walk the earth but we never let on to other people.
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), hear about a child misbehaving and/or acting out, and immediately think, "Well the parents MUST be doing something wrong, or they're kid wouldn't be acting like this!" Well, people can be very, very mistaken. There are born sociopaths and psychopaths out there. Wired badly from birth. Compulsive liars who lie for no apparent reason. I DO get what you're saying. 
