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UPDATED: May 31, 2013 NO. 22 MAY 30, 2013
Lonelier Than Ever
Parents face the challenge of making a generation of only kids socially active
By Wang Hairong
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EARLY START: Toddlers, accompanied by their caretakers, learn to cross the road at an early-education center in Tianjin on May 8, 2012 (YOU SIXING)

Compared with children she taught a decade ago, or even a few years ago, Zhang Jing, a kindergarten teacher of nearly 20 years in southwest China's Chongqing, says kids nowadays are less independent and poorer at interpersonal skills.

Zhang said that more than half of the children in her class cannot feed or dress themselves, and some children need teachers to coax them to sleep at nap time.

China's post-80s generation has been a hot topic of discussion in the country. Most individuals in this cohort, now in their early 30s or late 20s, are the only children of their families due to China's family planning policy. Doted on by parents and grandparents who revolved around them exclusively, they have been labeled as spoiled, self-centered, ill-mannered, maladjusted "little emperors" and have raised fears that they would be a "lost generation."

Now, the post-80s generation has grown up and many are raising their own only children. A second generation of only children have neither siblings nor aunts, uncles or cousins, and worries abound that they could grow up lonely, which will likely impact their character and social skills.

Not all the problems of only children are caused by their singleton status; rather, some should be blamed on poor parenting, said Sun Yunxiao, Director of the China Youth and Children Research Center in Beijing.

Sun said that Chinese parents of post-millenials tend to spend too little time with their kids. They also neglect to tailor early education to children's individual characteristics, and needlessly emphasize imparting knowledge over building character and fostering good habits.

Pampered children

Most children in Zhang's kindergarten are taken care of by their grandparents.

Zhang said that she can tell whether a child is looked after by the grandparents. "Usually, children brought up by elders are less independent, irritable and weaker in language ability," she said.

A survey conducted by Women of China magazine shows that 70 percent of children across the country are taken care of by their grandparents. Many elderly people, having gone through hardships when they were young, thought as life gets better, they should go all out to take good care of their grandchildren, said Xiong Bingqi, a well-known educator and Deputy Director of the Beijing-based 21st Century Education Research Institute.

Eager-to-please grandparents give water to children before the young ones even feel thirsty, and they always keep a watchful eye on children during outdoor activities, forbidding them from taking any risks. Overprotective grandparents tend to produce selfish, wayward and excessively dependent children, said Sun Hongyan, a researcher with the China Youth and Children Research Center.

Sun said that if parents fail to establish close bonds with children before they reach 6 years old, children will more likely feel estranged from their parents and develop psychological problems.

Formulating remedies

Many parents of only children, having a good understanding of the kids' solitude and the importance of emotional intelligence, try to make up for the relative isolation by finding playmates for their children.

Chen, a mother in Hangzhou in east China's Zhejiang Province, enrolled her then 34-month-old son in five early-education courses last fall. She said that her main purpose in doing so was to give her son an opportunity to see the outside world and play with other children, and was less concerned with how much knowledge he could intake.

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