We produce `white trash´

I like this strict speech by Michael Winterhoff, a German child-psychologist: many parents compensate for the growing loss of orientation and recognition they feel today according to the following motto: even if nobody out there loves me, my child at least should do so.

Children used to be seen as children and intuitively led and guided by adults as such. For at least 15 years now they have been treated as partners and reared with the help of discussion and explanations. But you can't learn tennis, either, by having it explained and demonstrated to you. It isn't only parents and grandparents that are making major mistakes today, but professionals, too.

According to Winterhoff now must start as far back as kindergarten and continues on into school, where teachers are receding more and more into the background and assuming the role of mentor and, more recently, coach.
Primary school pupils are supposed to teach themselves reading, writing and arithmetic; grade one is taught by grade two. The fact is, however, that from a developmental psychology perspective, small children go to school to gain their mothers' approval and do many things they don't feel like doing for their teachers' sake.
All of these relational disorders are linked to false reactions: `even if nobody out there loves me, my child at least should do´ so that make emotional development impossible. We end up with an entire generation of under-three-year-olds: egocentric, unable to cope with life, lacking in independence, unemployable or unfit for vocational training.

This problem, by the way, is a worldwide phenomenon, seen in all of the wealthy countries and not only in Germany

According to Winterhoff the tragic part of it is that the problems these children have can no longer be solved even through increased strictness. The child is not overburdened because it is treated as a separate person but because it is treated like a small adult.