'Parenting Wisely in a Too-Much-of-Everything World'

I read an article reporting on parenting in today's world. These are the parts I especially agreed with:

• Today's society faces "ratcheted up," excessive cultures geared toward individuality, competition, super-sized consumerism and "kids-are-fragile" therapeutic thinking, he said.
  "I think we think we need a lot to make us happy," said Dr. Doherty, adding "there's so much to offer our children that wisdom and balance is difficult -- and in the process, children grow up too fast."
• . . . children and teens are failing to benefit from social skills developed in unstructured, unsupervised, unofficiated experiences with siblings or peers -- "we used to call it 'going out to play,' " he said -- where a child has to find someone to be with, convince them to play, negotiate what to play, teach others how to play, help enforce the rules and decide when to stop.
• He also cited national and multi-national studies that show family meal time is a strong predictor of academic and psychological adjustment in children and teens -- better than time in school, sports or cultural arts and helping to decrease future involvement in alcohol, drugs, promiscuity, depression and eating disorders.
• Parents work to limit scheduling and eliminate overloads, training and teaching children with an end result in mind. "I think we as parents should determine our success [when they are] at age 25 -- and not by how much they like us along the way."