Our Hurried Children

Our Hurried Children by David Elkind was not a story in any sense, but an article, a non fiction piece. David Elkind talks about how short a childhood is, the stress that we all face is making us mature faster, leaving the safety of beign a kid. No one realizes how fast they grow up until they are adults and forget what it is to be a kid. The attitude of the child does not play as largely a role in the early maturity as the attitude of the parents and the society it lives in. If a child is being pressured to grow up, by having more stress, more responsibility than it should, it will inevitably grow up, too fast.

One of the biggest ideas of early maturity Elkind talks about is early academic achievments. There is so much pressure from everyone in a childs life to get good grades. Get striaght A's and you will go to a good middle school. Do even better there and a good high school is right around the corner. And in hgih school you better beleive that everyone has such great hopes that you will do the very best, do what you can to be accepted into an ivy league college. When does the pressure to do well stop? After school your career starts, and maybe a family.

At a young age it starts as dressing like an adult, looking like one. When someone reaches adolescents, the pressure to be older comes on stronger, to smoke to drink, to do drugs.
Childhood is to be enjoyed, live it as long as you can because once leave it, you can not respectably go back. Our generation is growing up so quick, every 12 year old has a cell phone, my 6 year old cousin just got an i pod. What has happened to the days when kids ran around outside playing school or princess. I realize now watching my brother and sister getting older that they are always on the computer, all of their 10 and 12 year old friends carryign around nicer cell phones than I have. Most of the girls wearing more makeup than I wear now, when I was not even allowed to wear make up until 8th grade. Children are dressing like adults now, tending them to act accordingly.

While reading this essay I learned alot. Some of the stuff I knew, from my mother, who is currently studying most of what Elkind was talking about. Some of the information I read I gathered from observing people through my life time. What really interested me were all the facts presented, all the ones about how young the children were who commented these felonies.