Its cliché to state that today’s kids have far too many choices. The previous generation also had its ongoing mess ups that affected their children and youth. They too survived childhood and so did we. But have times really changed that there should be a need for special concern regarding our children. Will our children also survive their childhood or are the parallel societal changes a threat to family life and childhood development?
The leaps and bounds in technological advances, social structural changes have opened doors that did not exist earlier. As a society we today have access to more. We have bigger homes, better finances and fewer children. Our children today have access to technology and gadgets which earlier generations did not have, giving them opportunities to more information, more stimulation and more choices.
From a very young age, TV, mobiles, and computers have become the child’s most convenient distraction. Business markets however have access through this technology to advertise using basic family values and peer pressure as strategies directed to the child and their parent.
A classic example is the child’s diet. Parents against their better judgment end up feeding young children with foods that are downright unhealthy. Advertisements have blatantly managed to convince the child that a small plastic egg filled with unhealthy sugary preservative, is in fact a kinder joy. They further convince the parents that the plastic egg does not only contain something good to eat but also a stimulating toy, which of course their children should have before their friends do. Oily chips with saturated fat, sugary drinks with caffeine, chicken packed with hormones are what the young children of today eat. Who makes these choices?
Is there a role reversal in decision making? Are children calling the shots in areas that are the responsibility of the parent? Or are marketing strategies finding loopholes in our parenting styles? Concerns are being reported by child health care specialist of the unhealthy patterns in eating.
There is a reason for childhood. It allows us space to grow and become adults. We cannot simply rush through growth. There are certain psychosocial patterns that need to be developed along with the physical make up. That is why the unit of family needs a rhythm.
Children have to have fun, play and just be the kids they are meant to be. Play for example, teaches them some of the greatest lesson in life. When children engage in physical play with others, they are learning social skills of interacting, their bodies are learning benefits of movement and physical activity, their laughter is teaching them skills of relaxations and stress busters. Outdoor play like Cycling, climbing trees, hills, playing football, swimming in the river, sea, enhances normal childhood.
During Childhood, traits of the social-self need to be explored. Socializing skills, emotional management, curiosity, attention span, develop through play and interactions. The child’s impulses to get whatever they want have to be governed within the social norms for them to adapt to life. Markets cleverly use this id’s desires, by creating toys that seem sophisticated and suggesting that it would give them opportunity in today’s time and age to help them decide who they want to become.
One of the subtle messages the markets gives our children is that they are the center of the universe and should get everything they demand, they should have all that is new and that they are unhappy with what they have. Complicated technology is being promoted cleverly and subtly for children that every parents who considers that their child needs to keep up to changing times would not hesitate to buy.
However, Kim Payne, a counsellor and educator, states that children below the age of 10 need time to become themselves through play and social interactions. By overstimulation their environment with too many toys they are being deprived of the most essential elements of relationships and unfortunately the only emotional gesture they learn is more. Obsessed with more, they begin to undervalue what they already have. This unfortunately creates in them a sense of vulnerability.
Childhood has not changed much since when we were children, however companies that market for children have convinced their parents that children are maturing faster today that they need more complex toys to hold their attention. Every few months a new toy or game will appear in the market with a similar jingle. The truth however is that when children have less stimulation to hold their attention they become more interested and this cultivate true power of attention.
Parents eager to want to do the right thing end up making compromises in their nurturing skills. Parenting is not an easy task, and requires continuous dedication. Weighing between options, maintaining a tight balance on what is permissible and what is not, parents have to create a matrix of unconditional love, nurturance and guidance. A NO should mean a NO.
Tough love is very much a part of parenting, as nurturing love. The confidence of love which a child seek should not be lost in the fear of being a bad parent. Worry is a normal aspect of parenthood, but it should not become the loophole to a lost childhood.
Dr Aldina Braganza e Gomes is a clinical psychologist, psychotherapist and associate professor, HOD, Dept of Psychology Carmel College
