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Adulthood – Commentary Lesson

Hi, this is Kristin, welcome back to the commentary for the conversation Adulthood. So I thought I would start off by saying that the conversation that AJ and I had was a generalization. Obviously, not everyone in the United States is wanting to necessarily stay young. So we were giving a lot of generalizations about that.

But I thought I would talk about another side to this topic, a totally different side, which is the side of kids growing up too fast. In the conversation we were talking about adults wanting to stay young but the other side that I want to talk about is kids growing up too fast.

So I want to give you a few examples. Joe was recently telling me about someone he knows who does tutoring. So tutoring is working, usually it’s working with children, helping them with different topics that they’re studying in school, or different subjects, like for example math or reading. So this particular person apparently got a call from a woman, a mother, who was interested in this guy, this man, tutoring her 4-year-old.

Now, her child had just turned 4 years old and she was wanting a tutor, I don’t know if it was a little boy or a little girl, she was wanting a tutor for her child to start reading. This child had just turned 4 years old. So that’s kind of an extreme example of pressuring a child to grow up faster.

Here, y’know, Joe and I didn’t, we have…he seems to know of different circumstances but I was a teacher’s assistant at a private school here in San Francisco and the children, I believe, if I remember correctly, they started learning to read in 1st grade. Maybe a little bit in kindergarten, so kindergarten is right before 1st grade. Generally, I think you’re about 5 years old when you’re in kindergarten, 6 in 1st grade, 6-7 years old in 1st grade.

Joe was talking about our nieces starting to actually learn in kindergarten. They’re in a different state. They’re not in California. But anyway, at this particular school where I was working, the children started to learn, to really learn to read in 1st grade. And I can remember some of the kindergarten teachers talking about the children coming to school already knowing, some of them, some of the students, already knowing how to read.

Now, this is a school where I said, they start to learn the majority of reading in 1st grade. So here were these kindergarten teachers, kindergarten is right before 1st grade so it’s 5 year olds, and here some of these kindergarten teachers were seeing some of their students who could already read because their parents were working with them, were teaching them to read before they started kindergarten.

And the teachers were frustrated by this because some of them could read and of course some of them not, if the parents hadn’t been teaching the children. They came to school and they were at the normal level of learning to read. So it was very challenging for these teachers to be working with students who could already read and those who couldn’t.

The parents of the teachers, sorry, the parents of the children who could read were really pressuring these teachers to challenge their children, to not be teaching them the regular curriculum for reading. Now this is the curriculum that they were normally going to be teaching. They wanted, because their children were already more advanced, they wanted their children to stay challenged. So this was really difficult and stressful for these kindergarten teachers. And they’re not even really, they weren’t even really teaching reading actually at that point anyway, just a little bit they started.

So I can remember I was an assistant to a 1st grade teacher. I can remember at the beginning of the school year taking a small group of children aside and working with each of them to see where their reading level was at, knowing that they were taught a little bit in kindergarten but of course some of their parents were teaching them as well. I just, y’know, we wanted to get an idea of where their reading level was, if they could read at all.

And I can remember some of these children getting so stressed at me for me asking these questions for them to read, even though I would tell them, “No, it’s okay, it’s okay if you can’t read it.” Some of them would start to cry. You could see this pressure building up like they were putting so much pressure on themselves, and probably also getting this pressure, it’s probably something they were getting from home already which is why they were putting that pressure on themselves to do really well. And that was just heartbreaking for me.

And another example was, well those were the two things actually I was going to talk about at this particular private school. The children, some of the children already coming to kindergarten knowing how to read and then, y’know, my 1st graders just trying to see where their reading level was and seeing how they were putting so much pressure on themselves to do so well. And that wasn’t even, that wasn’t even for the example of seeing where their reading level was.

In general, I saw in whatever class they were in they would put a lot of pressure on themselves to do, to be little perfectionists basically and to do really well. I don’t know, it was so long ago I don’t remember putting that kind of pressure on myself when I was their age. I remember more being interested in playing, not so much, I mean I was interested in doing well in school but 1st grade, I think I was more interested in playing.

Another example is my nephew who is in 11th grade, so he’s in high school, and he only has one more year of high school, 12th grade and then he’ll graduate and then the next year he’ll actually start college or university. So a couple of times, he’s in Georgia, a couple of times when I’ve visited my family in Georgia, he’s talked to me about how busy he is with all of these extra activities outside of school.

And he was telling me how some of them he didn’t even really want to do, some of these activities. And so I asked him, “Well, why are you doing it then if you’re not enjoying it?” And he said, “Oh, Aunt Kristin, you don’t understand. College is, today they want to see a lot of activities. They want to see that you were involved in high school in a lot of activities. It’s not just about having good grades.”

Now this is again something else that Joe and I have different experiences with. He also, I was talking to him about this and he remembers the same thing. Yeah, when I was applying for college they were looking at not just grades but that I had been active in a lot of, a lot of extra things. But we were applying to two different kinds of colleges, as well. I think Joe was applying to more competitive colleges.

I can remember when I was in high school, for me I was, I don’t know, I enjoyed high school and I really was, I was involved in activities but it wasn’t until actually my last year, my senior year, where I was involved with a lot of things. And it wasn’t because of applying to colleges. It was just for some crazy reason, I wanted to do all these extra things.

And it’s kind of interesting because at my high school, anyway, our senior year was when students tended not to be so active and really take a lazy year, knowing that…the idea was that it was our last year of high school. Taking a lazy year because knowing that many of us would be going to college and then it would, y’know, there’d be a lot of studying involved.

But anyway, that’s another example. Seeing my nephew and how stressed he was and telling me, “Oh, it’s just not like when you were going through school. Colleges look for all these activities now. It’s not just about your grades.” He was so stressed about it and I just was thinking, “Gosh, I don’t remember being that stressed about, at least not being involved with activities.”

Okay, so that’s a few examples for the other side to the situation that we talked about in the conversation, adults wanting to hold onto their youth or to being younger. So this side is about kids having this pressure to grow up sooner rather than later, kids growing up too fast.

Alright, so this concludes the commentary for this conversation Adulthood. Have a good month and I’ll see you next time.