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Recent reality television shows have exposed the insanity of parents. Shows like VH1′s “I Know My Kid’s a Star” and MTV’s exposes on child pageants demonstrate how crazy parents can be.
On Wednesday’s episode of “I Know My Kid’s a Star,” one mother was teaching her daughter, who can’t be much more than 10 years old, to sing. As the mother was teaching, the daughter looked confused. “What, is my tampon hanging out?” the mother asked her daughter. I was flabbergasted.
The same mother, before her daughter went on stage to perform, said “Let’s buy that dream house.” The performance wasn’t being officially judged; there was no prize money. I doubt this is the first time that the mother said that to her daughter.
Girls in this show padded their shirts and sang of adult relationships. In the pageant expose, it wasn’t much different. “It will be a national holiday when she gets breasts,” one mother said as her seven-year-old daughter whined that she wanted “boobies.” These parents are making their children grow up faster than is natural.
When parents push their children too far, their kids will grow up to have less mentally healthy lives. One of the show’s hosts said that if some of the parents continued to push their children, they would be downing Vicodin and drunk-driving, like star Lindsay Lohan.
According to Lisa Rapport, Ph.D. who researched child stars, “The environment of the entertainment industry is not necessarily toxic to normal development. Instead, the results support the well-established theory that good parenting serves as a buffer for life stress.” The trouble with this, at least from demonstrations from these shows, is that the parents are not offering good parenting and buffering stress – they are adding stress.
I can understand where these parents are coming from. When I was a child I was heavily involved in horse shows. Every weekend I would be pushing my ponies over fences, having my mother braid my hair with ribbons for “cute points” and smiling my head off at the judges as I trotted about the ring. When I did poorly in school my parents would threaten to not allow me to compete in a horse show. From this experience, I understand that it can seem like the children want it more than the parents.
More importantly, from this experience, I know that parents should first be parents. I ended up being burnt out, heavily competitive and I let my grades slip – all of this before fifth grade. Yes, if my parents said that I could only ride for fun and not compete in state-wide competitions I would have screamed and yelled, but that’s parenthood.
Heather Steeves was second in her division until her horse died . she then continued to beat the horse.
