By Maha Jamac
When we were young, parents were more involved in our lives. They checked our homework, attended school parent-teacher meetings, discussed school activities with us at home, and regularly checked our academic performance with our teachers. They were also there for us for supervision and parental guidance; they made it a point to meet our friends and get to know who we hang out with. By sunset we would have had dinner and then on bed. When we misbehaved my mother would deny us watching our favourite cartoon, or take away our toys and sometimes put us to bed earlier than usual, which we hated of course.
Everything meant something back then, the fear of getting punished, the need to excel at school so that my dad would get us the latest version of PS games which we would brag about the next day around our friends.
On weekends we spent some quality time together. Going for a picnic was our most awaited outdoor activity. It gave me a time alone with my mother where I had her undivided attention regaling her with the latest gossips at school and telling her about my favourite teachers, while my dad and brothers played football.
My parents were not big on laissez faire parenting, so even our leisure activities were concerted and planned. We spent calculated hours on television and the type of movies we watched were supervised by my mother who made sure we did not watch everything that came on television.
Nowadays, I look at my younger siblings juggling many devices: laptops, smart-phones and taps, I see empty shelves in their bedrooms, same shelves that were filled with all kinds of dolls, toys and stuffed animals. It is agonising when I see my nine-year old sister watching a movie on Fox movies or HBO instead of cartoons. I think that it’s nuts that the harshest punishment for your kids mischief is to confiscate their smart phones or tabs, like thats the worst thing that they could be punished with.
With so many devices all over the place monitoring became almost impossible, the rest of the world is a click-on-a button way and God knows what our impressionable youngsters are being exposed or introduced to.
I remember that I got my first cell phone at the age of 17. That was in my last year of high school, and I also remember how much I had to beg and plead with parents to get me one. It took me a year to persuade them to just entertain the idea, while my youngest sister got hers when she became 12 years old and she had to ask only once.
What is bizarre about this whole thing is that the same parents that gave me the discipline yet unforgettable and meaningful childhood that I had are going so easy and all laissez faire on my siblings now, and I wonder why? But then times have changed, right?
Some concepts are universal but their expressions change through time and differ from culture to another and individual to another, maybe thats it. Maybe some things have not changed but their expressions and sources have, and may be its just become about reality that kids nowadays do not enjoy monkey bar, swings and the parks as we did when we were little, may be our youngsters do not appreciate and cherish the same things we did. And may be globalisation has already taken its toll and there is no way to reverse its good and bad. Or may be, yes times change but human values and what should be cherished, should not be outdated.
Its not easy to break the spell technology has on many of us, and its hard to burst the high-tech bubble kids today are living in and get them out of it because they dont want to. But if parenting is about anything, its all about getting kids do what they dont want to do which is in their best interest and not to do that which they want to do, which is harmful to them.
Parents should be more involved and while they let their children benefit from all the good technology has to offer they should be conscious about what kind of information and messages they are being exposed to. And together with their child, parents have to develop rules about the best and safest behaviour for all electronic media.
Parents should also learn how to cross the digital divide to catch up with their kids and establish a forum that will bring them closer. Its their responsibility that they constantly remind their children that we are humans and there are so many needs that can only be fulfilled by human interactions and doing things with other human beings not with a machine and for that to happen sometimes they have to unplug their devices.
Children are supposed to be spontaneous, lively and curious. Its the parents responsibility to keep alive their childrens sense of wonder and love to discover and explore the world outside their doors and beyond the screens of their devises. By all accounts its not healthy for childrens emotional, cognitive and psychological development that they lead a sedentary, life isolated from the real world. Children learn best by doing, thinking and exploring. Real world experiences, quality human interaction, and relationships, help children discover their interests and abilities across different contexts.
In todays world, I see children but I don’t see childhood, more like adults trapped in childrens bodies. And seeing kids of this generation this way, it behooves us to a take a moment and think, really think about our children, their development and future and the way parenting contribute to that development and future, and what the next generation would be like if we dont do something about it?
Let us restore what was once built to stand, let’s save and help this generation so we can save the next.***
Photo taken from The Wired Family