Every Wednesday I offer tips for adulthood.

Well, so much for the end of over-parenting.

After a year’s hiatus from that dreaded term – “helicopter parenting” – now you can’t pick up a magazine or go Online without being bombarded by more stories about over-involved parents. They’re monitoring what their kids eat…how they do their homework…even who their friends are.

And what’s worse, over-parenting, we now learn,  isn’t just bad for the kids. It also makes adults unhappy. They set too high a standard for themselves and end up disappointed. They’re not just exhausted, but lonely.

As someone who’s prone to worry about, well, everything, I’m also naturally prone to over-parenting. And yet, I also know that this isn’t the person I want to be.

Here are five ways to help yourself curb the over-parenting impulse:

1. Find somewhere else to put your energy. I think that one of the reasons that people over-parent is that they don’t have any other place to put that energy. This is a criticism often levied at SAHM’s, who are criticized, rightly or wrongly, for making parenting a career. But I know plenty of working parents for whom it’s equally true. They come home from the office and channel all the adrenaline that goes into supervising staff and hitting deadlines into over-monitoring their kids. The trick – whether you work inside or outside of the home – is to have a hobby or some other activity that can sap up some of that extra energy. It might be volunteering at a local homeless shelter. Or joining the PTA. Or becoming a board member at a local charity. It doesn’t really matter. The point is that you’ve got a focus outside your kids.

2. Consult an expert. This may sound counter-intuitive, since one part of over-parenting – in America, at least – is to over-pathologize every single aspect of your children’s behavior in an endless struggle to perfect their shortcomings. Having said that, sometimes seeing an expert can also correct that tendency to do so. I recently took my daughter to see a speech therapist to re-evaluate her lisp. During the course of the evaluation it became painfully obvious that a. my daughter’s lisp is slight b. she herself has no problem with it and c. the therapist didn’t think it warranted any further therapy. Without coming out and saying so (the speech therapist was, after all, English), she basically let me know that this was really my problem, not my daughter’s. And that by insisting that my daughter’s speech could be clearer, I was actually making things worse. Lesson learned. Mouth zipped. Next?

3. Take The Long View. I’ve posted before about how all of my conflicts with my husband can be reduced to one single dimension: I go too fast, he goes too slow. But there’s a corollary to this dynamic which is actually quite useful for confronting over-parenting within…OK, one of us. Which is that precisely because I often gallop through life at breakneck speed, I’m often very focused on the short run. And so with any “flaw” that I detect in my children – i.e., they’re not reading enough, they’re reading too much, they’re not social enough, they’re too social, etc. – I tend to magnify its short-run effects. My husband is really good at reminding me that what matters is the long run. If my son is being silly and goofing off in class, my husband will ask me if I really think that he’ll go through life like that? And when he frames it that way, I realize that I don’t. It puts whatever behavior is troubling me at present in perspective and I can take a huge, much-needed breath.

4. Recognize that there’s only so much you can do. As an acknowledged control freak, I’m often loathe to throw up my hands and accept that I’m not God. I always think that if I just put in a bit more effort in dotting every i and crossing every t, I really can fix everything around me. Which is, of course, conducive to terrible parenting. Wherever you stand on the whole nature vs. nurture debate, one of the most startling – and relieving – aspects of being a parent is that you wake up one day and realize that your kids aren’t you. They have their own interests, their own personalities, their own rhythms. And there’s absolutely nothing you can do about that. (Thank Goodness!)

5. Move to Europe. One of the most insightful things I’ve read on this whole helicopter parenting debate was on the Motherlode blog at the New York Times. It was a comment by a reader from Europe who opined that perhaps the reason American parents are so over-anxious about their children is that they have too many choices and there is too much variance within those choices. In Europe, the commenter argued – and largely because of different public policies – child care, education and even toys tend to be much more homogeneous. And because there are fewer choices and those that exist are of similar quality, parents obsess less over getting “the very best.” This may be a bit of a stereotype, but I suspect that it contains a grain of truth. So if you’re really throwing up your hands right now and just don’t know what to do, remember: You’ll always have Paris.

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For those who are interested, I was over on Politics Daily yesterday talking about French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s campaign finance scandal.

Image: With Mom by MJIphotos via Flickr under a Creative Commons license

So I opened my Facebook account early this morning and came across this gem.

A friend of mine had linked to an essay at the BBC by a woman named Joanna Robertson. It was about  a new ordinance in Berlin making it legal for children to make noise between the hours of 9:00 a.m. and 7:00 pm. That’s right. The Germans had to pass a law in order for children to be…well, children.

When you read the author’s very funny account of what it’s like to raise a child in Germany, you may be a bit taken aback. As she reports, “‘Excessive child noise’ warranted a police call-out to our building for the crying of a newborn baby and, one Saturday afternoon, a group of cheerful 12-year-olds playing a game of Monopoly.”

And it’s not just in Berlin where things are rough for kids. Robertson also describes the rigorous and hyper-centralized French educational system her daughter was forced to endure, as well as the prohibition on getting your kids’ clothes dirty in Italy.

My friend on Facebook added this comment to her link: “Interesting comparison – wish they’d included London!”

Funny she should ask. One of the very first essays I published after moving to London a few years back was tellingly entitled “Where Have All the Playgrounds Gone?” It ran in the International Herald Tribune and it was an account – based on my then-newbie American eyes – of just how eye-poppingly different British expectations of childhood were from those I’d experienced in America.

As I wrote at the time: “Drama classes don’t advertise creativity; they talk about self-confidence, public-speaking and diction. Swimming lessons are not about making kids more comfortable in the water. They’re about learning the backstroke, dammit!”

(Of course, Americans are also annoying in their own right. Robertson notes the advice she got from one American parenting coach about how her family should all just “sleep together on cushions on the floor and switch to unpasteurized milk.”)

So today – to let the world know that it’s not just Germany and France – but all of Europe that seems to want children to grow up really quickly, I’m going to link to that early pre-blog essay I wrote on parenting culture in the U.K. and my own reactions therein.

Enjoy.

Image: Pondering At The Playground by christopherdale via Flickr under a Creative Commons License.

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Speaking of kids, I am off to the hospital for the last of my son’s in-hospital allergy tests. The score so far: Peanuts: win. Milk: loss. Let’s hope that sesame is more than a draw…

Every Wednesday I offer tips for adulthood.

This week’s list is inspired by a recent post I did on five reasons we all need a wife.

As with the division of labor within marriage, I’m a big believer that – it’s best to be honest as a parent about which tasks you like and which tasks you find onerous.

I’m not in a position to hire a nanny right now – (and we all know how hard that can be) – but if I had an imaginary care-taker for my children, here are five jobs I’d readily delegate:

1. Swim Lessons. Much like riding a bike (see below), learning to swim is one of those formative childhood experiences that’s meant to stay with you your entire life. I was at a dinner party last night and everyone at the table very clearly remembered their first swim lesson (often with a grimace.) I don’t mind going to watch my kids swim (as I currently do every Sunday morning.) But those early lessons where you also have to don a bathing suit and jump in and “acclimate them to the water” while singing Motorboat, Motorboat over and over? No thanks.

2. Riding a Bike. You know how they have that expression “It’s like riding a bike!”? I think there should be a sister expression: “It’s like learning to ride a bike” which captures the tedium, frustration, and near-death experiences that characterize the bike-learning process. Yeah, I know. This is parent blasphemy. What can I say? I told you I valued honesty.

3. Art Projects. I’m cool with some paper and crayons, even a scissor or two. But once glue, paint and – God Forbid – anything with a needle and thread get involved, I’m totally ready to hand off to someone else. I don’t, mind you. But I’d like to. Which is why I’m *so* jazzed that my daughter is at a camp this week where she’s learning to make her own clothes. Today she came home in a tiger-fur waist coat (vest, for you Americans.) She was so proud of herself. And so was I. And relieved.

4. Science Experiments. Ditto. Mind you, I love the *idea* of a test tube. But once you actually start mixing things in those beakers and waiting for them to react…uh-uh. (And by the way, why do all the experiments require iron filings? I mean, really. Who has those just lying around the house? Sure. Right here with my copy of the Constitution…)

5. Spectator Sports. I enjoy watching my kids compete in sporting events. It’s when they ask me to take them to watch a sporting event that I wince inwardly. This might be because – as someone whose own sporting prowess doesn’t extend much beyond pool and bowling – I just don’t find sports that interesting (Musical Theatre, in contrast? Now you’re talking…). So attending, say, a professional soccer game? Not my cuppa…

Don’t get me wrong. There are plenty of parenting duties I do enjoy: reading, writing, singing, play acting, playing board games, doing homework, baking cookies, ice skating. And more.

But I’ll happily pass on those listed above.

What’s on your list?

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I’m over on PoliticsDaily.com today talking about a controversial CIA torture case in the UK and why it’s been so divisive for this country.

Image: Sewing Lesson by Robert the Noid via Flickr under a Creative Commons License.