Doherty Lecture

For one of my classes I could get extra credit if I went to this lecture by William J. Doherty. I went just for the extra credit- but ended up really loving the entire thing! If you don't know who he is, you can click here...apparently he's a pretty big deal :)

So here's what I have to say about his FaBuLoUs lecture:

The topic of William Doherty’s lecture was “Parenting Wisely in a Too-Much-of-Everything World”. He started off by discussing how things move down. The example he gave was with limos. Years ago if someone got to ride in a limo on their wedding day it was probably their first time being in one. Then, getting a limo for prom became common, then getting one for a sweet 16, then for a 7 year-old kid’s birthday party, etc. I got picked up for a limo for a friend's birthday party... I think she was turning 11 or 12?

We watched a clip from the Today Show in which a family with three kids had eight activities combined on Wednesday nights. The issues that Doherty pointed out about this are that there is no “whole family” time, no eating dinner together, no feeling of belonging and being loved by an entire group, no sibling interaction, and no learning of social skills that occur during unstructured play/activities that don’t occur during structured times. He pointed out that the parents’ response of being happy with a day like this proves that over-scheduling is a social norm.

Some interesting facts that Doherty talked about are that time in religious activity is down 40%, family vacations are down 28%, two-thirds of teens and 30% of preschoolers have televisions in their rooms, one-half of American families have the TV on during dinnertime, and that children in families that eat meals together three times a week or less are two-and-a-half times more likely to be over-weight or obese in childhood. Another fact I found interesting was that family mealtime influences academic achievement more than school, studying, sports, church, or art activities.

My favorite part of his lecture was when he talked about how we need to treat our children more as little citizens that are expected to contribute (i.e. chores, doing their homework so the teacher doesn’t have “dumb the lesson down” the next day in class) than as little customers. He said our goal is not to win-over our kids and make them like us. Doherty said that it doesn’t matter if our kids hate us during their teens because we don’t let them do things their way- but that it matters more how they’ve turned out by the time they’re 25.

I think this is so true! And sorry mom for giving you such a hard time when I was a teenager!