The Relentlessness of Modern Parenting
I didn&#x27;t realize it until I read this article, but this is what keeps me up at night and motivates me to spend so much time and effort on my children. Making sure my kids are successful adults and maintain the economic lifestyle my programming career currently affords them is why I send them to camps all summer long and martial arts classes in the afternoons to improve their focus. It&#x27;s why my wife and I spent hours working on our son&#x27;s application to the gifted program recently and stress them out over getting their homework done each night. The future feels uncertain and unstable. My kids need to be prepared for anything.<p>Are we over-parenting? Absolutely. But if I let my kids go free-range and they have a hard time as adults, the same exact people who accuse us of over-parenting will be right there accusing us of under-parenting. The same childless people who sneer at us for keeping our kids challenged and engaged are the ones who sneer at us when we give the kids an hour of screen time at the end of the day or when one of our children has an age-appropriate temper-tantrum. We parents are damned if we do and damned if we don&#x27;t.