California Educator

FEBRUARY 2010

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Is Generation Z fishnet hose and tank tops with spaghetti straps short enough to show off their mid- riff. They worried that they weren’t pretty enough or popular enough to have boy- friends. They wanted to wear makeup. This behavior might not be surprising in middle school, says Colleen Briner-Schmidt, but it was shocking to observe in girls who were in her K-1 classroom. “We were very concerned about what we considered to be inappropriate clothing, as well as their conversations about boyfriends and girlfriends,” says Briner-Schmidt, presi- dent of the Unified Association of Conejo Teachers. “It was distracting to have these things happening in my classroom.” “Seven seems to be the new 17,” says San- di Pope, Las Virgenes Educators Association (LVEA) president and a fifth-grade teacher at Willow Elementary School. “Starting with incoming kindergartners we’re seeing less and less of the child in childhood. We are seeing a loss of play. We are seeing a loss of imagination. They are using sarcasm on one another and are too young to understand growing up too soon? the hurtfulness it can cause. They are using profanity without batting an eye and don’t even realize it’s inappropriate.” Youngsters are indeed growing up faster The girls wore shiny vinyl boots with as a result of “age compression,” says Diane Levin, a professor at Wheelock College in Boston and author of several books on the topic. “When I taught kindergarten 25 years ago, boys and girls didn’t want to kiss each other; they played together. Now you have girls fighting over boys and boys fighting over girls on the playground, and other girls and boys feeling left out because they aren’t popular. Not every child is having that expe- rience, but it is happening with greater fre- quency.” Levin believes the trend can be traced to advertisers targeting youngsters with ads that en- courage them to act older than they are. In her book So Sexy So Soon, she explains: “Age compression is a term used by media profes- sionals and marketers to describe how chil- dren at ever-younger ages are doing what older children used to do. The media, the toys, the behavior, the clothing once seen as appropriate for teens are now firmly en- sconced in the lives of tweens and are rap- idly encroaching on and influencing the lives of younger children. In addition, there is a blurring of boundaries between children and adults, as demonstrated by the similari- ties in clothing marketed to both groups in the fashion industry. Age compression is es- pecially disturbing when it involves sexual behavior. Children become involved in and learn about sexual issues and behavior they do not yet have the intellectual or emotional ability to understand and that can confuse and harm them.” Unfortunately, says Wheeler, age com- pression campaigns by advertisers coin- cided with No Child Left Behind, a law that changed preschool and kindergarten from places of fun, play and socialization into high-pressure academic environ- ments designed to ready children for stan- dardized tests. Instead of having time for play, exploration and learning to become problem solvers, youngsters must take on the tasks once expected from older chil- dren — whether they are developmentally ready or not. As the “adultification of children increas- es,” youngsters become less kind to one an- other, observes Levin. “It affects conflict res- “My grandma says that I am grow- ing up too fast. I don’t answer.“ –Anonymous middle school student ❙ olution. As girls become more and more fo- cused on their appearance and looking right for boys, they judge others on how they look and what they can buy. More and more their sense of worth and well-being is about hav- ing the right objects.” Community awareness “Children need to learn how to have giving and caring relationships instead of treating themselves and others as objects,” says Levin. Ironically, says Pope, some parents think it’s cute to see their child act older. Parents will laugh about their daughters having “boyfriends,” and encourage their children to wear clothing and makeup that will make them attractive to the opposite sex. “We had a horrific incident where a par- LEFT: Colleen Briner-Schmidt, president of the Unified Association of Conejo Teachers. 16 California Educator | FEBRUARY 2010 ent threw a boy-girl party and little kids were playing spin the bottle,” recalls the el- ementary school teacher. “Parents were watching and thought it was cute. You never Continued on page 38

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