In my short time as a parent to an 8-year-old girl, I am in awe at what I see children — from toddlers to teenagers — experiencing nowadays.
For young children, I am surprised how little free time they have today to just play, imagine, and pretend. My daughter attends one of the highest-ranked public elementary schools in New York City, and many kids who get picked up by their parents or babysitters after school then go on to attend a variety of lessons — music, sports, art classes, chess classes, test prep classes, Boy Scouts, religious education, etc. If they’re lucky, they get to go to the nearby playground after school to relax for a few minutes before they go to their lessons.
Last year, I ran into a mother whose daughter attended another school in the neighborhood, and when I asked her what extracurricular activities her daughter participated in, the mother told me her daughter took a class every day of the week. Her first-grade daughter even took an after-school class in playwriting.
Sometimes these after-school activities seem to me like schemes for businesses to make money off of worried parents and are not in the best interest of the children. When I was growing up, kids learned to play an instrument in public school when they entered fourth grade.
Last fall, my then-7-year-old daughter wanted to take guitar lessons. When I inquired about lessons for her at a local children’s music school, they said she needed to take two classes — a beginner’s class and a music theory class. Both classes would last six months each. As soon as they told me the total cost came to $800, I politely declined and hung up the phone.
When I was in elementary school, my brother and I both played one sport a season. Each sport required we practice during one weekday and play competitively on Saturday mornings. The rest of the time, my brother and I would play outside after school on our bikes with the other kids in the neighborhood. We hardly had homework. My daughter is in second grade and, on average, has an hour-and-a-half of homework every night.
There was always some kid willing to play outside with my brother and I in the neighborhood. In the fall, we jumped in piles of leaves. In the winter, we built snowmen and had snowball fights. The movie “Star Wars” and its sequels were very popular at the time, and we would pretend to play the characters. Maybe if we knew how to spell, we could have written a play about it.
Another issue for me with kids nowadays is gratitude. When I was little, if I didn’t thank my mother for something, she would tell me how during World War II, her family’s food was rationed. My mother told me to be thankful for everything I had in my comfortable childhood. Today, I remind my own daughter to say “please” and “thank you” as a way of showing respect to others, but I don’t have a story of woe to tell her except that my parents wouldn’t let us have pets or a real Christmas tree.
Thanks to my mother, thanking people is a reflex for me, and if I forget to thank someone, I feel guilty about it for days afterwards. Nowadays, when I open doors for teenagers or let them stand in front of me in a cashier’s line, many of them don’t even bother to thank me. It seems to me that what’s really going on is their eyes are so glued to the electronic devices in their hands, they’re not even paying attention to what is going on around them.
Another amazement for me about teens today is their caffeine consumption. Growing up in the 1980s in New Jersey, there were no Starbucks or specialty coffee stores around. Now when I go to a Starbucks, I see teenagers sipping huge cups of coffees and lattes. The first time I drank coffee was in college.
I have also seen teenagers walking around drinking out of these cans labeled “energy drinks.” When I went skiing this past February, at the bottom of the slope were two marketers trying to get teenage skiers and snow boarders to taste a sip of a brand-new energy drink, which would apparently give them enough caffeine to stay active on the slopes for hours.
In 2012, my daughter’s dentist informed us that after four decades of declining numbers of cavities in teenagers, the number had started to rise because these young teens were now drinking these energy drinks. According to a local Cleveland newspaper, “these drinks provide an extra-corrosive combo: sugar with acid.”
My last issue with teenage trends is their fondness for Victoria’s Secret merchandise. Thirty years ago, Victoria’s Secret did not exist. When I needed to buy undergarments at the onset of puberty, my mother discreetly took me to the teen section of a local department store to purchase them. Not until I graduated from college and went to live on my own, did I enter a Victoria’s Secret store, which I think has very nice merchandise for adult women.
When I walk down the street in Queens, I see teenage girls carrying these pink striped bags that say “Victoria’s Secret” on them. They’re usually walking with their friends (who are also carrying Victoria’s Secret bags) or their boyfriends or they’re wearing a pair of sweatpants that say “PINK” on them. “PINK” is the Victoria’s Secret catch phrase, which usually indicates that these young girls have been in a Victoria’s Secret store.
To allay my fears for my own daughter, I spoke with a parent whose daughter currently is in college. The mother told me many young girls today buy their clothes (not just lacy bras and panties) at Victoria’s Secret. Her comment reminded me of being in the girl’s locker room at my daughter’s swim class last year and seeing a girl about 10 years old wearing a pair of sweatpants that spelled out “PINK” on them.
Call me old-fashioned, but every time I see a Victoria’s Secret bag, I think of their provocative ads that don’t feature pictures of young girls in sweatpants. If my daughter reaches her teenage years and comes home swinging a Victoria’s Secret bag in one hand and a boyfriend in the other, I will tell her how I attended an all-girls high school and had such little contact with boys, I took a blind date to my senior prom. Hopefully, that will instill enough guilt in her that she won’t want to enter a Victoria’s Secret store again until she is a full-grown adult.
Allison Plitt is a freelance writer who lives in Queens with her husband and young daughter. She is a frequent contributor to New York Parenting.
