How over-parenting can harm your child's development

The most wired and pampered generation
These days, nothing is too good for our children. I am amazed by how much stuff my own kids have. How did it happen? We are not a shopaholic family, yet their rooms are submerged in a river of toys – and that's just the ones we haven't carted off to the charity shop. What will happen when they discover information technology? Will they end up like Julio Duarte Cruz, who, like teenagers all over the world, rushes home from school to spend time with his gadgets. "My bedroom is my own virtual world," he tells me via e-mail from Seville, Spain. "And my parents like it because they know exactly where I am."

By any yardstick, we are raising the most wired, pampered and monitored generation in history–and is that really such a bad thing? After thousands of years of trial and error, perhaps we have finally stumbled on the magic recipe for child rearing. Maybe all that micromanaging pays off in the end. Maybe we are bringing up the brightest, healthiest, happiest children the world has ever seen.

Rethinking childrens' health
Reports of the death of childhood have certainly been exaggerated. There are many advantages to growing up in the developed world in the early twenty-first century: You are less likely to suffer malnutrition, neglect, violence or death than at any point in history. You are surrounded by material comforts that were unthinkable even a generation ago. Legions of academics, politicians and companies are striving to find new ways to nurture, feed, clothe, school and entertain you. Your rights are enshrined in international law. You are the centre of your parents' universe.

Yet childhood today seems a far cry from the "nest of gladness" imagined by Lewis Carroll. And parenthood is no walk in the park, either. In many ways, the modern approach to children is backfiring.

Let's start with health. Cooped up like battery hens, with little exercise and a high-calorie diet, children are growing dangerously fat. In the United States, manufacturers are supersizing car safety seats to accommodate the nation's tubby toddlers. Nearly a fifth of American kids are overweight, and children in the rest of the world are following suit. The International Association for the Study of Obesity estimates that 38 percent of under-eighteens in Europe and 50 percent in North and South America will be obese by 2010. Already the extra pounds are condemning children to heart disease, type 2 diabetes, arteriosclerosis and other disorders once confined to adults.

Read more:
• Evaluating your child's progress at school
• Guilt free parenting
• 6 ways to help your children learn to read

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Excerpted from Under Pressure by Carl Honoré Copyright © 2008 by Carl Honoré. Excerpted by permission of Knopf Canada, a division of Random House of Canada Limited. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.