When my daughter was born, I decided to give her the greatest gift of all: A sane mother. To do this, I had to raise her to not drive me crazy. This worked out well for both of us. She is now a mother, attempting to pass on the gift of sanity to her daughter.
"Intensive parenting" is driving parents crazy, reports Claire Cain Miller in the New York Times. "The expectation that they spend ever more time and money educating and enriching their children," endangers parents' mental health, warns Surgeon General Vivek H. Murthy in an advisory. Parental stress, exhaustion (and marital unhappiness) are bad for kids.
Ignore your children, at least some of the time, writes Darby Saxbe, a psychologist and USC psychology professor, also in the New York Times. Let them watch you do adult things, but don't try to entertain, educate or otherwise improve them, she advises.
By "teaching children to crave constant external stimulation and entertainment, intensive parenting can . . . worsen screen dependence," she writes.
"Mindful underparenting" might be boring for them. That's OK. "If you want to raise empathetic, imaginative children who can figure out how to entertain themselves, don’t keep their brains too occupied," writes Saxbe.
Emily Oster, the economist and parenting guru, has a new podcast, Raising Parents, writes Candace Mittel Kahn, who credits Oster with saving her sanity during the pandemic.
Go read a book, ride your bike, work on your treehouse, visit your friends, pick some vegetables, play with the dog, take a hike, get out of the house, away from the TV, computer, game console, smart(?)phone, and stop being such a mope.