EVERY KID A STAR

By ELIZABETH GLEICK

Once the ideal child was seen and not heard. But the times and the culture have changed. More and more often a child is seen on national television and heard roaring around the world. Sons and daughters have become the projection of their parents' dreams and the repository of their hopes. "We're moving, in a cultural sense, in the direction of having every kid be a star," says James Dawson, head of the Professional Children's School in Manhattan, which is attended by aspiring and professional actors, musicians, figure skaters and models. "By doing that, of course, what you really say to kids is that normalcy is below par."

No question, some parents are ultra-achievers who push their kids too hard, too fast, making every moment of their young lives a competitive and action-packed quest for self-improvement. Others let the kids do whatever they want, sipping and tasting from an array of options and following their own pleasure. Jessica Dubroff may have been a victim of both approaches. While it is often difficult to deter a child who is genuinely passionate about an activity or whose unusual talent sweeps her away into tournament tennis or the Broadway theater, some parents have a disturbing tendency to forget that children are just that: children. "The key is balance," says David Fassler, child and adolescent psychiatrist at Choate Health Management in Boston. "Kids need, want and benefit from clear, predictable boundaries."

What they do not need is to become miniature adults. "There is a desire to have children grow up quicker and quicker," says Fassler. "This manifests itself in many ways: how quickly can we teach them to read, toilet train them; how early can we get them into the most exclusive preschool?" Jack Wetter, a clinical psychologist in West Los Angeles, says he observed a goldilocked four-year-old in preschool. "I asked her what she was doing, and she replied, 'Can't talk now. Working on Workbook 2. Going to Workbook 3.'"

Many parents, understandably, prefer to assume that their child is exceptional until proved otherwise. If little Susie picks up a violin, she's a sure candidate for Suzuki; if she gets the part of the Sugar Plum Fairy in the local production of The Nutcracker, make sure she watches her weight. Wetter says he sees an extraordinary number of bright young patients whose parents are paying for tutors in addition to private-school tuition to make sure their kids keep up in class--or get ahead. "We've lost the concept of well-rounded children because we're so focused on achievement," he says. "If a kid gets a B today, tomorrow the kid's got to go for an A."

Experts make an important distinction between talented kids and true prodigies: a prodigy instinctively knows his rare gifts and is almost impossible to control or sway. "The power and force of what that child wants to do is coming from within," says David Henry Feldman, a developmental psychologist who is head of the Eliot-Pearson Child Development Department at Tufts University. "You'd almost have to kill that child to keep him or her from doing what he or she wants." Rita May, who brought up her family in Chapel Hill, found herself in that position when her son David was eight. David, who had a beautiful singing voice, auditioned for the North Carolina Boys Choir--without telling his mother. "He was the youngest boy selected that year," says May, who panicked when she learned that her child would be traveling to New York City and on camping trips with older boys. May decided to let David go--to no ill effect. "He wanted to do it very, very badly," she says. "It was not my dream, but it was clearly his."

Like May, one need not be the stereotypical stage parent to feel torn between giving a child every opportunity and sometimes just saying no. When it comes to potentially dangerous activities, however, the limits should be obvious. "Seven-year-olds don't have the kind of judgment to process complex information and skills all at once," says New York psychologist Karen Zager. "Think of your typical young child. When he's watching TV, alarms could go off, and he wouldn't notice." Suggests Fassler: "If you've got a young child who is fascinated by flying, you don't have to let her learn to fly. You could say, 'Let's learn everything we can about planes' or 'Let's go fly in a plane and sit next to the pilot.'"

Nor should it take an expert to sort out just whose desires are being fulfilled or to recognize the difference between a child who loves her piano lessons and one who is going through the motions. But children can be dangerously adaptive. "Most children really want to make their parents happy and will go to enormous effort to that purpose, even beyond their own best interest," says Feldman. Little Jessica, for instance, may truly have loved to fly, but, says Feldman, her parents "were taking the idea of following a child's lead seriously. But a child is a child and can't lead."

While Jessica's story is a rare and tragic instance, the dangers of such overachieving or intense focus on one activity show up in countless ways. The child actor grows up without an education; the tennis star mysteriously drops off the circuit to spend some time being a teenager; the figure skater takes part in a plot to club an opponent. Child athletes may ruin their bodies: ballerinas develop anorexia; teen football players take steroids. And doctors say they are seeing more and more young people who are not special stars exhibiting a range of emotional problems, from depression to eating disorders to suicidal tendencies. "We see many children whose lives are overscheduled, who go from one set of lessons to another," says Fassler. "We're robbing them of the time to develop the coping skills that they need to deal with the realities of life. As a result, children are becoming more vulnerable to a range of emotional difficulties."

Children being pushed too hard may not be able to articulate their feelings, but the signs are there. They become emotionally volatile or complain of aches and pains. They can't sleep. They lose touch with their friends. Wetter believes the current flood of children being diagnosed with attention- deficit disorder may be misleading. Many of these children, he says, "just don't know how to express their frustration. By the time they are 16, many are burned out, antisocial and rebellious."

A vicious cycle has been set in motion. Parents who live through their kids produce children who grow up feeling they have missed out on childhood, a time when play, pure and simple, with all its lively, unstructured freedom, should be paramount. "If a child is totally immersed in ice skating, she may become Katarina Witt, but what did she lose?" says Wetter. "I see lots of adults in treatment who say, 'I never had a childhood. I wanted to be a doctor, so I spent all my time at the library doing a biology project, but I never played soccer.' " You can chart the arc of life today by visiting the psychology section of any bookstore, he says. "On the one side, you've got books on how to raise achieving, successful children. And across from that, you've got books for adults on how to overcome your depression and increase your self-esteem."

--Reported by Andrea Sachs and Anastasia Toufexis/New York

With reporting by ANDREA SACHS AND ANASTASIA TOUFEXIS/ NEW YORK