The Child Trap Summary

Joan Acocella’s Article “The Child Trap: The Rise of Overparenting” is based on the idea that parents push their children to become better and brighter than their peers. Parents try to jumpstart their child’s learning beginning when they are just infants. The Walt Disney Company produces the Baby Einstein DVDs and CDs that play music from Mozart and Beethoven, claiming to give a head start academically. Preschoolers have taken away playtime with more reading and math and it only becomes harder as the child gets older. Once standardized testing starts, parents being to look at the other students as competition and might hire tutors. (Acocella) Parents have also resulted to insisting that their child has special needs and should not be timed
Growing up, my mother could have been the prime example of overparenting. My free time was spent reading and writing instead of watching Barney or playing dress up. From the time I could walk, I was enrolled in dance lessons and from there I would head to T-ball. My mother compelled me to compete in everything possible at our small church and to try to be the “shining star.” Then Girl Scouts came along. Not only was I an embellished Brownie, but my mother became the Troop Leader as well. She tried to get me a new badge every week, sometimes neglecting the other girls in the troop from accomplishing as much as I would. Acocella makes a point of telling us how children are often sent to special-skills camps during the summer, and this is where most competition begins between parents. Acocella asks, “How do you explain to the other mother that while her child spent the summer examining mollusks at marine- biology camp, yours was at a regular old camp, stringing beads and eating s’mores?” These parents like to make their children look better than others and take pride in their child being ahead of the game. My mother thought the same way. First, I was sent to Youth Camp with my churches, then it turned into Girl Scout Camp, and as I got older I began attending an All Arts and Sciences
She would volunteer me for activities without asking me first. Eventually, her pushing these things on me turned me away from them. Now that I am older, I do not attend church the way that I should because of being forced to when I was younger and I cannot stand to look at a box of Girl Scout Cookies. Once I got into high school however, I realized that all of these things my mother got me involved in made me stand out. When it came to college applications, I had a whole resume of volunteer services and extracurricular activities I was involved in. Where Acocella tells us about how the extracurricular activities and the science summer camps begins the competition between parents, these things puts the children above their competition of getting into schools. Colleges look at the students as being well rounded and well balanced by being able to handle all of the extra things on top of their heavy academic course load.