Hurried child syndrome

Hurried Child Syndrome
Name
Institution
Abstract
This paper addresses the ‘hurried child syndrome’, a condition described by Elkind (2001) as ‘‘a set of stress-linked behaviors, which result when a child is expected by his parents to perform well beyond his or her level of mental, social or emotional capabilities. Parents over-schedule their children’s lives, push them hard for academic success, and expect them to behave and act like miniature adults’’ (p.165).It discusses the dynamics of hurrying children, the negative sociological impacts of hurrying children and also recommends on what parents can do to avoid falling for the trap of the hurried child syndrome. The paper relies mostly on secondary research studies and existing scholarly work and appreciates that most of the work on this subject is based on North America. An attempt is made to explore international perspectives of the subject in other parts of the world.
Introduction
In the world today, everything is competitive and fast paced. People want instant success and achievement in everything they do. Parents, also, want their children to excel in all aspects of their lives. To achieve this, parents have structured their children’s time to the extent that children have far less time to ‘just be children’. They have scheduled time for school, competitions and games but have no time to play with their friends, to sit and watch cartoons or just lazy about as is expected of them at their age. …