psychology today

sick kid = sleepless nights.

... on a separate note, victor subscribes to 'psychology today'. i happened to read a bit of it and found an article particularly interesting called "rocking the cradle of class"... it's about parents and how it's now socially acceptable (albeit damaging) to live vicariously through your kids. a few quotes i found thought-provoking:

The pursuit of perfection in kids stems from a fundamental misunderstanding of the task of parenting, Anderegg charges. "Parenting is not an engineering task, it's an endurance task. It requires a high tolerance for boredom. Engineering is based on the idea that if you do something right the first time, you don't have to do it again." Efficiency, however, is inimical to child-rearing. "Parenting is a problem to be solved daily. It's a repetitive, quotidian task," says Anderegg. That's what maximizes parent-child interaction and persuades kids they are loved. "Seeing kids as well-designed products is a disease of really smart people," he notes. "They feel they have to make child-rearing a task worthy of their time."
......

The trouble is, perfectionism is transmitted from parents to kids. "A child makes four As and one B," says Adderholdt. "All it takes is the raising of an eyebrow for her to get the message." Then it seeps into her psyche and creates a pervasive personality style. It lowers her ability to take risks and reduces creativity and innovation -- exactly what's not adaptive in the global marketplace. It keeps kids from engaging in challenging experiences and testing their own limits; they don't get to discover what they truly like. Further, perfectionism reduces playfulness and the assimilation of knowledge. It destroys self-esteem. And just when the world requires flexibility and comfort with ambiguity, perfectionism creates rigidity. Perhaps worse: The emphasis on achievement makes parental love feel too conditional.

In short, the push for perfection undermines the identity capital of kids. But the biggest problem with it may be that it masks the real secret of success in life. Any innovator will tell you that success hinges less on getting everything right than on how you handle getting things wrong. In real life, you can't call the teacher and demand that a C be changed to an A. This is where creativity, passion and perseverance come into play. The ultimate irony is, in a flat world you don't make kids competitive by pushing them to be perfect but by allowing them to become passionate about something that compels their interest.