Parenting

Nelson Mandela once said, “There can be no keener revelation of a society’s soul than the way in which it treats its children.”

Do children come to us as blank slates? John Locke, the father of the idea of tabula rasa, would say so, along with the philosopher Rousseau. According to these two, society plants seeds of hatred, envy, and selfishness as children grow older. Perhaps, children come to us as selfish little creatures already. Their being hell-bent on amassing resources and power is only curbed by society that imposes punishment for such behavior. Which of the two of these camps are right?

As a parent, you might be forced to ask this question many times. In today's day and age, we see a lack of adequate parenting, almost negligence, and an increase of self-absorbed little tyrants.  Nowadays, parenting is about sticking an electronic device in front of your children to keep them quiet and content, but this is not real parenting. The consequences of this mistaken belief will only be realized after it's too late. Do not allow YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok to raise your children, unless you want them depressed, anxious, and lonely (in fact, electronic devices are contributing to children’s brains not forming correctly, and possibly causing cancer, see https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7642138/ for more details.). But aside from not emotionally investing enough in children, when parents do interact with them, it is often very sloppy.

The purpose of parenting is to protect and prepare children for survival and thrival. (Yes, thrival is not a word, but I bet you won't forget that purpose of parenting now.) To learn how to survive, children need to experience the world. It is said that a smart person learns from the mistakes of their past, but a wise person learns from the mistakes of others’ pasts. How will they learn anything if their noses are buried in a phone playing Fruit Ninja? Children must learn from their own actions, which means you, as a parent, must give them age-appropriate choices. If you ask your toddler if they want a tuna fish or PB&J sandwich, and they respond with tuna fish, like a psychopath, don't let them force you into making a PB&J sandwich afterward. When the tuna fish sandwich does not please them, yet they made the decision, you cannot undercut the consequence of their action. This should be extrapolated into all areas of life except in three situations: the situation is too dangerous, the consequences are too far in the future to be a good lesson for them, or their actions hurt others.

For simplicity, I asked ChatGPT to think of a scenario that would include all three of these exceptions. Imagine that your children are planning to go to an abandoned factory that still has hazardous materials inside of it. If you were to let them go, there is a high likelihood that they would begin mixing these hazardous materials, exposing themselves and the town to the toxic fumes that would be created, increasing the likelihood that everyone involved will get cancer. That would be a good time to stop the children from exploring the natural consequences of their actions.

One thing children desperately need is contact and belonging, or physical touch. Being touched, like when being hugged or horsing around, generates dopamine and serotonin and makes you feel better. Children do not get enough physical play to adequately stimulate their brains. For liability purposes, children have become ever more suppressed and regulated. In one Canadian school, it was against the rules to pick up snow for fear that a snowball might be made and then thrown. Parents are the ones that need to initiate physical touch because parents are infinitely more sophisticated in their ability to do so. It is extremely easy to be a timid child that will not engage in physical play because schools constantly condition that desire out of children. The demonization of children being children is at least a national phenomenon and needs to end. If children cannot play, how else will they cope with the stress they experience? We often see their attempts to cope as attention-seeking, and we punish that behavior more by avoiding them, or worse, medicating them.

There are many other things that children need that their parents are failing to provide. In short, where it doesn’t matter, we are pushing children toward adulthood at younger and younger ages. This stresses them out, and when we see that they are stressed, adults try to take away their abilities to cope. Maybe the little monsters that you see around you were born that way, maybe they weren't. Maybe current parenting trends of non-parenting turn them into what we do not want to see.