First, there were hockey moms, and then soccer moms. Some time in 2005, the term “helicopter parents” was coined to describe those parents that hover over their children. And now, a new favourite of mine, “curling parents” — those who sweep the ice in front of their children.<\/p>\n
I only have a couple of seconds to post today, but I wanted to say something about this interesting Ottawa Citizen<\/em> article<\/a> about an interview with parenting writer Carl Honor\u00c3\u00a9, author of In Praise of Slow,<\/em> where I saw the “curling parents” phrase.<\/p>\n As I read the transcript Susan Allan’s interview, I found myself nodding along with Honor\u00c3\u00a9’s ideas. He calls milestones “millstones” and advocates a return to a more laid back approach to raising children. He speaks out against the way we take it upon ourselves to make our children excel at any cost: <\/p>\n \nIt’s amazing how many of the tools of hyperparenting people still believe in though it’s patently untrue and has been shown to be so. The pressure to do things in a mechanistic, measurable way takes away the joy of it. At the end of the day, this should be about joy. There’s nothing more joyous than having a child.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n And this… I loved this one:<\/p>\n \nWe need to give kids the space and time for their brains to develop rather than turning them into achievement automatons on a treadmill ticking one box after an another whether it’s academic or athletic or artistic. Children are not projects, they’re people.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n He’s speaking tonight as part of the Ottawa International Writers Festival<\/a>, and it’s free. It’s been ages since I’ve been out to a literary event, and I’m going to try to make it out to see him speak. I figure the audience will be skewed to the parenting crowd, so I can drag Lucas along with me. <\/p>\n What do you think? Is there hope for lazy parents like me? Is it possible for us to turn off the treadmill and make laid-back parenting the new trend?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" First, there were hockey moms, and then soccer moms. Some time in 2005, the term “helicopter parents” was coined to describe those parents that hover over their children. And now, a new favourite of mine, “curling parents” — those who sweep the ice in front of their children. I only have a couple of seconds … Continue reading “Your phrase of the day: “Curling parenting””<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1248","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life-in-ottawa","category-mothering-without-a-licence"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1248","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1248"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1248\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1248"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1248"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1248"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}