A new parental paradigm

For thousands of years, the role of parents has been pretty much the same. Take care of your kids, protect them, feed them, clothe them and teach them the basic norms and values that guide our behavior. As far as we know, Neanderthal families did this in similar ways to the way modern families do. Parents came to know their obligations and responsibilities and most were willing to meet that challenge.

But we have a new parental paradigm today; one that has never existed before and one that has parents, other adults, and child psychologists the world over baffled at how to react to it. That paradigm is social media and its attendant cousins like smartphones, tablets, laptops, etc.

The problem is that we don’t know what our kids are doing on those platforms, even when they’re in the same room. It’s a simple process to find a page that’s acceptable to parents, minimize it and then immediately bring it to screen if the parents get too close. Throughout history, there’s never been another point in time where young people could get away with so much with so little effort. But there is today.

The parents get sucked into this deception by the supposed honesty of their children. I recently saw a PSA on television where a teenage boy told his dad he was going to play with friends. His dad asked him point blank if there was drinking going on in that group and the teenager said no so he got to go. Pretty open and shut case right? Be honest with your kids, they’ll be honest with you. Unfortunately, it doesn’t always work like that. Children, especially young teenagers, are very averse to admitting that their friends are doing something their parents would object to because they know their parents will put an end to that relationship and the kids don’t want that to happen. So they lie and tell their parents what they want to hear instead of what’s really going on.

As far as social media is concerned, it’s impossible not to notice how people of all ages, but especially young people, have their noses stuck in their smartphones literally every waking minute, fearful that they’ll miss something if they turn them off. Sleeping habits are even being interrupted because young people take their phones to bed with them and check them several times a night. In addition to the social media function, smartphones are used to bully defenseless kinds, just like they used to be bullied on the playground at school and many youth suicides have occurred because of it.

Instagram, the app that allows you to post a photo on its site and then the photo disappears a few seconds later was seen as a way for young people to send other young people inappropriate photos of themselves because they photos would disappear. They obviously didn’t consider that a viewer could take a screen shot with his own phone before the photo disappeared and then have a copy of his own that he could show or distribute to anyone.

Finally, the technological revolution has made it more difficult than ever before for parents and children to have meaningful conversations with each other. My boys and I did that a lot as they were growing up and I did it too when I was young with my mom, dad, and Uncle. But it seems to be a disappearing virtue because kids don’t want to be burdened by a talk with a grown-up when they can be spending their time with people they do want to talk to. If communication isn’t happening, we also know less about what our kids are doing or thinking than ever before and that’s how surprises happen.

But there obviously is an answer to this problem and the answer is for parents to be parents once again instead of trying to be their child’s best friend. You have your whole life to be his or her best friend once they grow up but during their formative years, they need guidance and advice from people who have experienced some of the things they’re going through and there’s no one better to touch a child’s heart than his parent if you’ve done YOUR job to create a bond between you. If we know we’re doing what’s best for our kids in the long run, it doesn’t matter if they think we’re mad at them for a little while as long as they learn the lesson we’re trying to teach.

Parenting isn’t a spectator sport so it’s up to us to take an active role in making sure our children don’t take the wrong path because once they do, it’s hard, and often impossible, to get them back!