Marvin Mattingly
1 hr
The six hour plus drive home after Flite Fest provided some much needed time to think about and process an event I witnessed in one of the build tents.  If you have kids please give them the one thing they and you can't buy; your time.  So many societal problems would be solved by this one simple thing.  Here is the event in its entirety..........
 The Hurried Child the Hurried Life; the Hurried Mother, the Hurried Wife.
Personal observations from Flite Fest 2019.
This is our second year for Flite Fest and again, it was a great experience. This time, we brought one of our grandchildren. Other than watching combat, I really don’t think he was overly excited or interested but hey, we tried and he tried. Like last year, I worked in one of the build tents with my grandson and my wife worked registration. With few exceptions, it was a great experience.
  One particularly troubling event for me personally was the source of the title of this rant. In 1981, Psychologist David Elkind Ph.D. published a book titled, “The Hurried Child”. In his book, Mr. Elkind laid out a case for the cause/effect of raising children with unrealistic time and expectation pressures. Over committed, over involved, over achieving, time pressured parents are not very conducive to the random, at their own pace, learning environment of a child. At the time of its publication, Mr. Elkind’s book received little attention in peer review publications but, over time, his observations have proven spot on.
  Late Saturday afternoon a child, about nine years old, came to the build tent with a plane he built from scrap cardboard. Considering this was his first attempt, he had little to work with and the fact that he had no help, it was a respectable effort. The plane was literally falling apart in your hands. The CG was so far aft that any semblance of controlled flight would have been impossible.  It was obvious the only way this child had any hope of success would be with one of the Speed Build kits. One of the other guys in the Build Tent took the boy and his dad to the store to get a simple kit he could build and fly. From the very start his parents comments were, “how long is this going to take” and “let’s just hurry up and get this over with, we have other places to go and other things to do for other people and this has already taken far more time than we have available for this”. Several more times, over the next twenty minutes, both parents made comments how this was taking far more time than they had available for, what they apparently saw as this little irritating annoyance their son wanted to engage in.  They honestly expected their 9 year old kid could master building and flying an RC plane in less than an hour and they could be on their way to the next over scheduled, over rushed event! They were highly irritated to be told it would take more time than that.
  The unrealistic time pressures they both put on this child were completely unbelievable and heart breaking. Much if not all of this time pressure emanated from mom, flowed down hill to dad and son got it from both ends. It was obvious this kid was averse to listening to help because that took time and he didn’t have time. He was averse to watching the online build videos because that took time and he didn’t have time. He was so pressured and rushed to” hurry up and get this done” he had absolutely no chance to ever succeed. He was doomed to failure by his overbearing, over demanding, over committed parents before he ever started. Once it became obvious to his dad and mom that he couldn’t build, check out and fly the Speed Build kit in less than ten or fifteen minutes, dad and mom packed up everything and headed home.
  Sunday morning the child returns with still over time committed dad.  I did not see them arrive on Sunday morning and only became aware of their presence after my wife came to get me to help this kid who was crying because things were going from bad to worse.  True to form, the kid and “hurry up and get it done” dad have reduced much of the Speed Build Kit to scrap foam board. They still don’t have time to listen; they still don’t have time to learn anything; just get it done so we can get this over with and get out of here! At this point dad walks off and I told his son, “if you ever hope to succeed at this, one thing you will need to learn is patience. If you learn nothing else in this hobby patience will be the best thing you can ever learn.” I don’t think he wanted to hear that but a few minutes later when dad returned, I told him exactly the same thing. No doubt he didn’t want to hear that either.
  From my observations, patience seemed to be a concept very foreign to this family. The end result was he didn’t have time Sunday to get a flyable plane before he and dad had to, “get out of there”. They were all so obsessed with the destination they had no time to enjoy the ride. I have little doubt the only thing this child learned this weekend was more failure and frustration. For someone who loves to see kids in this hobby this was particularly heart breaking for me. Even worse was the hidden message they sent to their own son. Knowingly or not, they told him he was an imposition on their precious schedule and that schedule was far more important than he would ever be.
  My wife and I have worked with kids for over 30 years and I have never seen over committed parents to this extreme.  For the sake of this child, I hope someone is able to get this message into the heads of both of his over involved, over scheduled, over driven parents. For all of you in the Flite Test family, (the vast majority) who take the extra time, patience and effort to teach your or other kids, “how to” I say kudos. When they are young, doing a task with their, “help” usually takes far longer than just doing it yourself but the eventual rewards of making a self-reliant adult are worth it. This nurturing, kid friendly, family friendly environment is what brought us to Flite Fest and it's what keeps us coming back.