LizzardKing

In their virtual world of desolation and terrifyingly immediate satisfaction fantasy, or is it?

We were raised different. We were taught the dangers of everyday life as early as primary school, even earlier sometimes. We grew up in classrooms with bomb posters, to help us recognize and identify the terrorist threat actively pursuing our country at that stage. Bomb drills was an everyday event, and hiding under your desk the go-to activity. Later on we were taught how to use weapons, had military drills, and were sent on survival camps. And throughout all of this, we were allowed to be children…

Life has changed. Life is still the same. The threats have shifted and the play even more so. Where we were once encouraged to stay out of our parents way by playing until the streetlights came on, today the child is encouraged to sit in front of a screen. Finding friends and creating gangs of mischief in my early years have been replaced by online teams targeting friends and enemies alike in a virtual world of war and competitiveness. Fortnite, COD etc has replaced cowboys and crooks, hide and go seek. The more things change, the more it stays the same.

So why the big outcry from parents around the globe categorically stating their children are spending too much time online?

My suspicion is it is our inability to adapt. To accept our part. To identify and assist in modern day problem areas like online bullying, lock-down restrictions, forcing isolation and even the archaic schooling systems geared for a bygone era’s industrial revolution. The modern addictions created through extensive research in dopamine feeding applications with immediate satisfactions are no more and no less addictive than the sins of the past. Ever increasing demands on the nuclear family for work hours and delivery in a money driven society allows us only to be less and less involved, and more and more blaming. But when I start listing them like this, it feels awfully straight forward that parents are complaining about their own failures to protect and enhance their children’s lives, through ignorance.

First things first. Are their lives that much worse than ours? Have we not enhanced our security, luxury and access to knowledge abilities? Are we not to blame for the vasts amount of time we force them in-front of screens and devices to babysit the nation? And if we do have a part to play, why was it acceptable when we did? Why were we allowed to go play outside in a perceived high risk terrorist threatened country? Did we turn out bad? Was the previous generation raised in isolation with vast distances between them and their friends worse off?

Simply put, human kind seems to be a highly adaptable species. We wouldn’t be around if we weren’t. And yet every generation looks down at the new. Every generation finds fault with the modern ways. Our limited capacity in a lifetime seems to allow only our own generational survival and enhancements, and exclude the current, at the cost of our own re-development.

I am not saying that the modern online generation is right or wrong, but I can tell you that 9 out of 10 doctors recommended camel when I was growing up, and that seems to be forgotten. We forget the heartaches of our own upbringing and continue to refer to the “good old times”.

But what if we could afford a balance? What if we could take some of the very best of our history, and apply it in modern times? Simple ideas like being able to change your own light fixtures, cooking your own food, creating your own accountabilities and managing the consequences?

Children of today are raised differently. We degrade and push them to excellence, and forget that we too once were held against the standards of the previous generation. When my son comes to me and ask for game time rather than going out to visit his friends, it is easy to forget that his friends are online at that very moment, and sending him outside will probably lead to him having to watch his friends play games online at their house. And we as parents simply shrug our shoulders to the whimsical fantasy that we are trying to achieve better for them. Let us be better…

If you truly feel that you want to give your child the benefit of the previous generation in this modern day world, isn’t it time that we embrace this new culture? Are we not all striving for a work from home job, and then telling our kids go out into the real world? Let us stop this nonsense, and find some practical advise for our children. Practical time, activities and lessons through introspection and theoretically mature analysis with advise to encourage and assist them, where we once fell short. Some high level tips and tricks, and areas of support, where we can already start to shape them in this new future. New thinking for the modern day parent if you will. A playground of which we can be proud of, and tell Cat Steven’s exactly where our children play.

Here are just a few of my early on analysis and findings on this matter, with some recommendations. This is but a starting point for me, maybe for you, and by no means the guiding principal for parents out there. Use it don’t use it. I will only ask you to review and enhance for your needs individually. I for one still need to enhance this in my life, and create a better than yesterday for me and mine.

• Online World
  • Profile
    • Showcasing the information available about people online to a child, explaining the ability to use and manipulate this data and the far-reaching effects this profile will have on your life going forward makes sense.
    • Your child decide their behaviours based on risk same as everyone else, and having the ability to choose safe exposures are in their interest. Time to drop the taboos and create the communication desired.
  • Bullying
    • Teach your child the difference between being a bully and a hero. Our children wish to mimic us, and it is up to each and everyone of us to showcase the supportive nature of humankind.
    • Explaining the use of tools like blocking of accounts, who can see your posts etc generates a user experience for them well within their control. This way bullying can be minimized, and the social impacts are mitigated in an ever increasingly exposed world.
  • Pornography
    • Teens will be teens, and exploration sexually will happen with or without you. With access to hordes of material, and not just star covered nipples like we used to have in the Scope magazine, the teaching will be whatever they can get their hands on. Our responsibility is to have a communication channel available to our children for their questions around sexuality like none before us.
    • Sex has been dirtied and placed into the realm of family life only, else it is unacceptable, and I for one will tell you that was not how my exploration went. Sex before marriage and as young as possible was a challenge and goal, and these days nothing has changed. Except the idea of healthy sexual practices. When you have the ability to talk to our children, guide them into an exploration journey of healthy happy sexually active couples, with adequate partner consideration, you stand a much higher chance of getting a result of a healthy sexual perception than even I had carried at a stage.

• Real World
  • Fitness
    • Giving your child access to a fitness regime is easy, as there are multiple activities available in general, but without sound example, you might as well give up. Find a hobby, activity or passion which you can complete as a family. Your children will mimic you in all behaviours, so unless you are their example, you might as well be leaving them online.
  • DIY
    • The next time you have to change the batteries to the remote, or switch on over to your alternative power solution due to load shedding, change a car tyre or clean the pool, why not ask your child to partake? Do you feel good when you achieve some DIY task? Trust me your child will feel achieved. When they are allowed to do the things we as parents are tasked with, they feel part, proud and for filled. Yours to choose where to use this.
  • Studying and schooling
    • Instead of embarking on a journey of education perfection, enable your child to understand the necessity of schooling even in today’s times. Yes they are being taught antique methodologies and historic nonsensical to the victor goes the spoils ideologies, but they are also enabled to learn that educations shows tenacity, resilience and competence.
    • Enable your children to read through the industrial age nonsense, and formulate new passions, ideas and abilities by working with them on generating entrepreneurship, self-abilities, self-research and constant striving for more, rather than rambling of the little they have.

Our children are the result of our abilities to influence, protect and enable them. If they are playing in a field where you feel they have no place, and you disable them by only leaving said space, you are the problem. When you disregard this brave new world and it’s abilities to challenge us as parents, or even entice us into its luxuries, you are dismissing your child’s ability to adapt, grow, and be even better than we were. The choice is yours. Be part of the solution, explore this world with them, or wait for them to eat a tide-pod. Either way, the results will come…

Amor Fati, but their fate, lies in your hands…