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Consumer Electronics Causing 'Death of Childhood'?
Posted by
Zonk
on Tue Sep 12, 2006 11:11 AM
from the ack-mein-childhood dept.
from the ack-mein-childhood dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Top children's authors, including best-seller Philip Pullman (His Dark Materials), have written an open letter to the British Government claiming that consumer electronics have brought about the death of childhood. They say that children desperately need 'real play (as opposed to sedentary, screen-based entertainment), first-hand experience of the world they live in'. The letter writers also state that children have lost their imaginations because they are, 'pushed by market forces to act and dress like mini-adults and exposed via the electronic media to material which would have been considered unsuitable for children even in the very recent past.' The article asks, 'is modern life too fast for the supple human mind? Do children have a rev counter we're red-lining by exposing them to so much input?'" So what does Slashdot think? Are kids growing up too fast nowadays because of them new-fangled technologies?
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Growing up too fast? (Score:4, Funny)
Long answer: Yes
And in other news (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
link to the actual letter (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Re:And in other news (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Let's see what they look like when they're 50 (Score:5, Insightful)
If I had kids they could play all the video games they wanted, but the hardware would be powered off deep-cycle batteries charged by a stationary bicycle. You play, you ride.
Parent
The Simple Life... (Score:5, Insightful)
My great-uncle became "man of the house" at age ten, when his father died in a farm accident. Today, he'ld be given counselling; then, he was given a household full of siblings and a farm to take care of. And he did it, because that was his duty as a man. Today, nineteen year old men are still considered "kids". They've had the luxury of growing old without growing up.
Two of my dad's eight siblings died during or shortly after childbirth. Most of my parent's family ended up with farm related injuries and scars. My uncle is missing a leg from where it got caught in a baling machine. My cousin died down a well, trying to fix it so that his family could have clean drinking water.
We don't want the simple life back. It would kill half of us, and lead the other half back to an early grave. Kids today aren't being "forced to grow up too fast". Try taking on adult experience at age 14. Try getting through life with a grade 3 education, because your Dad made you go to work to earn money for the family before you even finished grade school, like happened to my Dad's father.
Then try whining to me about how kids are growing up "too fast" compared to their forefathers. I don't see it. To me, they're barely growing up at all.
Parent
Re:The Simple Life... (Score:4, Insightful)
Ahhh, but that is not the subject at hand - electronic entertainment cannot be blamed for the poor state of parenting in this country today. I would most definitely agree that the general quality of parenting today does seem worse than the quality of parenting when I was young.
Your closing statement where you say:
... does not, IMO, have any bearing whatsoever with the rest of your statement. Looking at this logically, my daughter has high exposure to electronic entertainment and has a good imagination. Your nephew has high exposure to electronic entertainment and has a bad imagination. Therefore, high exposure to electronic entertainment cannot be said to be indicative of either result.
Now, admittedly, this is a pretty small sample group but I still stand by my statement - bad parenting, not electronic entertainment, is to blame for your poor nephew's situation.
Parent
Re:Send them all up chimneys! (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Growing up too fast? (Score:5, Interesting)
Henry Jerkins at MIT makes the excellent point that kids playing videogames are basically doing the same thing as kids playing cowboys and indians, and that videogames have become the virtual playspace for a new generation of kids who don't have the opportunity to roam in real environments. (He also makes the point that mom's are only freaked by games because they never saw what kinds of real and imagined violence went on when kids played outside.)
Finally, anyone who thinks kids today have been robbed of their imaginations should drop a box of legos in front of them.
Parent
Re:Growing up too fast? (Score:5, Insightful)
Our society ignores social ills by denying that they exist and using tools to pretend that reality is something else.
Parent
Re:Growing up too fast? (Score:5, Insightful)
I mean no criticism of you and yours with the following; it's just something I thought should be said:
In a rational society, either the people's law enforcement system would take care of the problem of crack users, prostitutes, and polluteres ruining woody ravines near their homes, or the people would be empowered to take care of the problem themselves using whatever force is necessary.
It's irrational to create a society wherein good people hide behind walls while the criminals roam free.
Please, folks, wherever you live, work toward getting people who understand this into positions of power.
Parent
Re:Growing up too fast? (Score:4, Insightful)
In a rational society the medical system would take care of the problems of crack users and prostitutes.
Parent
Re:Growing up too fast? (Score:5, Interesting)
it has been like that since the first cities were created. good and honest people who could afford it, would live inside the walls of the city, leaving the open fields to the mobs.
this idea of open cities is recent in human history, and apparently a failed idea. what we see today is a return to the old method off small walled comunities where kids can play outside their homes, for as long as they stay inside the walls of their community.
oh, and about the rational/irrational stuff, who's the crackpot who told you our species is rational ? me and my baseball bat would like to have a little chat with him...
Parent
Re:Growing up too fast? (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually in a rational society the people would just legalize drugs and prostitution and the problem goes away tomorrow. Decades of whatever force is necessary has turned this society into a police state full of frightened and abused citizens.
See how simple that was?
Parent
LEGOs (Score:3, Insightful)
Wrong Choice (Score:4, Insightful)
I personally think that parents who make this decision are failing their children. The child needs to be aware of what's going on in the world. That's why I love school classes that have current events, I encourage my child to read and / or watch the news. If they're secluded from everything, they're going have no clue what's going on when they hit the real world.
No, right choice (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Maybe, both choices (Score:5, Insightful)
IMO, the key is balance. Exercising only the mind or only the body is unhealthy in a child, and in an adult.
Parent
Back in my day (Score:5, Insightful)
But sincerely,
Every generation has some aspect that is supposedly going to bring utter ruination to the future. And every generation manages to cope. I think we will be allright as long as parents bring some healthy balance to thier kids activities. When has that concept ever been new and fresh? It has always been that way.
Caligulazation (Score:5, Insightful)
But how many generations had their kids sitting in front of, essentially, puppet-shows (or some other analog equivalent) all day, every day? In fact, one could argue that the loonier offspring of the "idle" artistocracy and their highly entertained (but not so very challeneged, physically, etc) kids were the precursor to what we're seeing now, but across much larger swaths of the society: flacid minds, a sense of entitlement, no sense of causality or critical thinking... sort of the Caligulazation of a much wider population.
Basically, the standard of living for most of modern western society is now so high that most of us are living like (or better than) the aristrocracy of the not very distant past.
Yes, we all assume that our current generation's kids are the ones that will wreck civilization, but there's actually something TO this one, I think, at least a bit.
Parent
Re:Caligulazation (Score:4, Interesting)
Unless we also have a way to suppress millions of years of mammalian (in general) and advanced primate (specifically) evolution, some kid born three or four generations from now that still has his pointy eye-teeth, predator's senses and sensibilities, and pack-protecting urges - but who has no outlet for any of that - is going to do exactly what I think a lot of them are doing today: go slightly crazy. You can't take every (or even most) adolescent's nearly superhuman gusto for life and channel it entirely into art, research, or even mountain climbing. I suppose that challenging, competitive sports area good outlet (or would be, if we weren't squashing them into one big "everyone is special, everyone's the best" festival right at the ages when actually striving against some fairly low-risk adversity is hugely helpful, developmentally).
Essentially: unless you change human nature (biologically, I'm talking - behavior and perception as heavily influenced by our DNA), making the world like one big nursery/playground for adults is going to produce ever more sociopathic human BSODs. I wouldn't rant about it, but I think, with a little perspective, now, I actually see it happening. The challenge, in the scenario you describe, is to generate sufficient adventure and adversity to scratch all of those primal itches without needing to fend off religious fanatics or killer luddites in hijacked planes in order to flex that bit of deep-seated programming.
Parent
No real programmers either (Score:4, Interesting)
But how many people out there were claiming we wouldn't be having any new low-level programmers because kids these days grow up with Windows and Macs rather than Apple IIe and C64's?
Re:No real programmers either (Score:4, Insightful)
Who says we do?
I think the generation that missed out on programming in severely constrained environments (I came in the tail end of it myself) are never forced to code with any discipline. If there's a problem, just throw more giga[bytes/hertz/whatever] at it.
Why do you think each successive version of Windows requires twice as much memory as the version before?
Unless you have worked in a very constrained environment and/or developed a set of tools from the ground up (say, the basics of a run-time library or class library), then it is not very likely you will have the discipline you need to write good code. To me, this is why throwing CS Freshman at Java is a Bad Idea. Throw 'em at an 8080 assembler with 16k or RAM. Things like Java can come along, but later.
Parent
Re:Real programmers are real people too (Score:5, Insightful)
We evolved in loose groups of 150-250 individuals. If you heard about someone getting eaten by a tiger then, chances are you should watch out because he was likely only a few hundred metres over that way, so the danger to you was very real.
Then we started to hear about things that happened to someone at the other end of the country, and suddenly it seemed like there were murderers and rapists and nutjobs everywhere, because barely a day went past when we didn't hear of someone getting killed in an inventive or gruesome way.
Now we've got the web, and e-mail, and satellite TV, and blogs, and we hear about it if a mouse farts in Buttfuck, Antarctica. And now it's not even safe to let your kids walk to school for fear of them getting molested, you can't get on a 'plane for fear it'll be bombed out of the sky, and you can't visit the toilet in your own house without getting abducted and beheaded by terrorists.
The only way to tackle this is by recognising what's going on and overruling your instincts. They served you well ten thousands years ago when you lived in a tree and had to avoid tigers, but now we're living in condos and keep small tigers in the house as pets.
Try my patented Lightning Test: Look up the statistics of whatever the latest mania/terror/panic is about, and worry about it if it's more likely than.. oh... say... getting hit by lightning.
Try terrorism - look up the number of deaths form terrorism each year, then look up the number of people who get hit by lightning.
Now if someone's advocating taking away civil rights because of terrorism, or locking up our children because of paedophiles, you can apply the simple test: Are they also advocating the compulsory wearing of earthed metal hats and rubber gumboots?
If not, then their little pet crusade is clearly disproportionate and can be safely ignored.
This has been a Public Service Announcement from the Lets All Get A Fucking Grip Society. Have a nice day.
Parent
The reason that kids are growing up too quickly... (Score:5, Insightful)
-also, as we over protect our children, we seperate ourselves more and more from the rest of the community. This splits our kids away from the available social networks and playmates - encouraging further isolation.
So, it's not the technology - but the fact that we don't teach or give our children any other options.
Re:The reason that kids are growing up too quickly (Score:4, Interesting)
Often the reasons that happens is both parents work or it is a single parent home. Plus there is so much mind numbing entertainment that our culture now expects to entertained all the time. I can not tell you how many times I have seen kids watching DVDs in the car when they are just driving around town! Adults are no better, we have games and TV on our cell phones, and movies on our IPods. One wonders what we could do with that time if we where not being entertained.
Parent
Re:Not only that (Score:4, Interesting)
My sister is lucky. Her husband works long hours and they both go with out so she can stay home with their child. She is also a former teacher so she has some major advantages over a lot of people.
I would say that parents don't have to buy PS2s, Gamecubes, or put a TV in every room.
That might be a good start.
When they are little you do have control over what they see and do.
Parent
Re:The reason that kids are growing up too quickly (Score:4, Insightful)
When you have the mass media constantly scaring people about sexual predators that prey on children, is it small wonder why parents nowadays are absolutely scared about letting their children go out and play in the neighborhood? Small wonder why the only time you see children at a playground nowadays is with very strict parental supervision....
Parent
Re:The reason that kids are growing up too quickly (Score:5, Interesting)
I think most people have trouble fitting themselves into their lives. They just don't have enough time to work, socialise, and relax to their own satisfaction. When you add a child on top of that, all kinds of mess comes out of it - and ultimately, your own self-interest carries more weight, so the children often end up on the losing end.
At some point, things need to be reduced and removed to make room. What screws that up is the general inability of most people to make real sacrifices... it's one thing to say you put your child first, but it's quite another to actually do it when you're down to your last few dollars. Even though this level of desperation is rarely an issue for most parents, there are innumerable little ways that parents deprive their children in ways mom and dad might not even notice: you can't afford the $4 bag of cookies your child wants, but you buy an $18 bottle of wine later in the same trip. Could you have perhaps gotten a $12 bottle of wine instead, and used the savings to buy cookies? Of course. The child sees and understands this, even if you don't, and by adolescence there's a massive buildup of frustration from it.
The message we give our children is that as adults, we get to do what we want, and children have to shut up and make do with what we deign to provide them. This doesn't just make our family lives difficult when the kids hit their teenage years, it also raises essentially infantile adults - they've been trained to be selfishly indulgent their whole lives.
I don't think there's an easy answer to this. I think you have to actually understand what you do and how it looks to your children, which unfortunately requires you to think about how other people view your behavior... and a lot of people just seem incapable of that.
Parent
Re:The reason that kids are growing up too quickly (Score:5, Insightful)
I think what you're mentioning here (perhaps accidentally) describes a little theory I've developed. For a long time now teachers and parents have been pounding the "you're special" and "just be yourself" messages into kids until they've developed this "I don't care what anyone else thinks, I'm me and I'm pursuing happiness" attitude. We celebrate attitudes like that in adults, too. I think this is a perversion of an idea that was supposed to make you always comfortable enough to do the right thing, regardless of outcome, into an idea that you don't owe anyone anything and anyone who expects anything of you (most of all sacrifice) is trying to prevent you from "being you".
I think we owe everyone arounds us something. I owe it to my neighbors to take my garbage out, keep my music down to a sane level and return their dog if I see him running down the street. I owe it to my parents to come help move furniture when they call. When I have kids, I'll owe it to them to make sure they get what they need, when they need it. In turn, each one of these people has certain responsibilities.
In an effort to bolster childrens sense of self-worth by ridding them of shame or guilt, we've thrown out responsibility with the bath water. I think we SHOULD care about what people think of us, and might have to start teaching kids that.
Just a thought I had.
Parent
It's more than just electronic games. (Score:4, Insightful)
It's also electronic content. A kid should not be raised by proxy in front of a video screen, whether he/she has a controller (or a mouse and/or keyboard) or not. There's more to growing up than that.
One should also be actively and physically engaged as well. Playing outdoors, running around, playing with physical objects (whether they be Legos or whatever).
Being raised is a matter of mind and body.
ADD, ADHD, Asperger's, Autism (Score:4, Interesting)
The increase in ADD, ADHD, Asperger's, and Autism would seem to indicate that children are being "revved" beyond their abilities.
I don't think it's the "fault" of electronic entertainment, but rather the incessant push to not merely succeed, but to excel. Those children with a variety of educational/entertainment/sport activities end up more balanced, but are still stressed.
Another part of the problem is that parents and authorities would rather push pills for ADD/ADHD than punish a child. When we twitched around in our seats in school, we got punished and learned to pay attention (sort of.) Now they flag a "problem" and stuff the kid full of pills.
The truly scary thing is that statistics are now showing that the ADD/ADHD "patients" grow up to suffer an increase in cocaine and meth addiction problems. Not surprising when you realize that ADD/ADHD medications are speed, so they're just trying to maintain the addiction developed by the educational and medical systems that would rather drug children than deal with the problems.
Parent
Not my children (Score:3, Interesting)
Sad Sight (Score:5, Interesting)
More than a few of the kids present were squatting on the ground, or in car seats, blank expressions on their faces, banging away at portable game machines.
How pathetic.
Someday these kids will need to take special classes to learn how to walk on dirt.
Re:Sad Sight (Score:5, Insightful)
We went to France once. Here my mother stood aghast at my total disinterest in the majesty of the cultural capital of the world. My regard for Paris paticularly offended her. I was bored out of my tree, and if I'd had a gameboy, I would have finished Metroid during that trip.
But in Paris, there was succor. The Musée des Arts et Métiers. Oh such joy! When my parents refused to take me, as they had more "cultured" places to visit, I went alone to what was one of the most memorable expieriences of my life. A menagere of scientific legend awaits all who enter. I went twice. If I'd had a gameboy, I would gladly have smashed it to pieces to get another tour.
I did finally manage to drag them to the Panthéon. They went for the "cultural" expierience, as some great men or other were entombed within. But I went for Foucault's Pendulum, one of the most elegant experimental proofs ever made. And within also, is a copy of Foucault's paper on the pendulum, containing his own mathematical equations, explaining the revolution of the pendulum as being caused by the rotation of the earth! Bliss!!
They left France thinking themselves "educated", and I a philistine, just as you might think that children dragged off to rocket launchings they have no interest in are similarly philistines. The simple reality is that people have different interests, and if you want to encourage your children to put down their gameboys you have to find activities that they find interesting, not activities you find interesting and simply want to force them into enjoying. So lay off sespairing at their lack of interests when you don't even know what their interests are.
Parent
fostering apathy in children (Score:4, Informative)
The simple reality is that people have different interests, and if you want to encourage your children to put down their gameboys you have to find activities that they find interesting, not activities you find interesting and simply want to force them into enjoying. So lay off [d]espairing at their lack of interests when you don't even know what their interests are.
I think it's important to also note that the government's compulsory schooling system treats all children the same, no matter their interests. John Holt [holtgws.com] realized while team teaching in the 1950's that most of his students were bored and frightened - bored because they didn't care about the current lesson, and frightened because the authority figure was making demands of them. According to Holt, the children were intent only on trying to figure out what the teacher wanted, and whether they should try to give it to them.
Holt wrote a couple books [holtgws.com] - How Children Fail (1964!), How Children Learn, What Do I Do Monday?, etc. At first he tried to fix the schools. Then he gave up, and became an advocate of "unschooling", where the child chooses what and how they want to learn. Doesn't work for all children, but it does work spectacularly well for many.
I myself was tied down for years in "school" - 11 years of government schools, 2 years of private high school, 3.5 years at the university. On the one hand, I'm kinda bitter about all the time I was locked up, but on the other, I realize that it's hard to appreciate spring without a long, cold winter.
Also see Gatto's Seven Lesson Schoolteacher [newciv.org]: "The third lesson I teach kids is indifference. I teach children
not to care about anything too much, even though they want to make it
appear that they do. How I do this is very subtle..."
Parent
I've seen this first-hand (Score:5, Interesting)
shouldn't it be an open letter to parents? (Score:5, Insightful)
what exactly does he expect the government to do?
Opinion Vs. Fact (Score:5, Insightful)
Part of me wants to dismiss his entire argument as nonsensical luddite ramblings. Another part of me wonders if he might have at least a small point. But it's where those two parts of me meet and ask "where's the proof?" that I finall come to the conclusion there is nothing to see here, move along.
At least, from the children I know and observe, I don't see them suffering developmentally from the fact that they can play their PSP all day. What I mean is, don't blame the PSP. The fact is, I think through simple, good, old fashioned parenting, a child can have a better upbringing today than ever before, as long as the parent is able to understand and integrate today's technology, within moderation, with the raising of their child(ren).
Maybe too many parents are becoming lazy, thinking technology can replace them in areas of parenting where it should not. But like I said above, about opinions.....
TLF
Poor kids (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Poor kids (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Kids MUST watch some TV (Score:5, Interesting)
I had a friend in high school who did not have a TV growing up, and as nice a fellow as he was, he was a hopeless rube that at the age of 18, still believed that wrestling was real and would purchase the bridge you had for sale at the drop of a hat.
I think he could have benifited from a few hours of TV per day, with an audio tape loop in the background repeating "None of this is real... None of this is real..."
Not because of the toys (Score:5, Insightful)
No, they're growing up too fast (and often in unhealthy ways) because of poor parenting and poor education systems.
It is not rocket science that a child left unsupervised with an unrestricted TV, Internet-enabled computer and PlayStation n in their bedroom is likely to spend an unhealthy amount of time in front of a screen, and come into contact with less than suitable material for someone their age. The also-not-rocket-science solution to this problem is... not to give kids all the toys and the chance to use them unsupervised all the time.
Likewise, it's easy to let the kids buy junk food on the way to and from school, and to eat school meals with poor nutritional value and drink soda, and then to throw a quick microwave meal or frozen pizza in for dinner. And then we wonder why more of our kids are seriously overweight and developing health problems than any time in recent history. The revolutionary solution to this is... giving kids real food and drink at meal times.
Of course, it's much easier for parents to leave little Jonny and Suzy to play with their hi-tech toys and then cook them frozen pizza for dinner than it is to take an active part in their upbringing by, I dunno, talking to them, reading to them, having dinner with them, and taking them to see and do interetsing things. The work-life balance in many western countries is now so far left of stupid that many parents see the easy option as the only option, however.
Similarly, one has to wonder at "education" systems that spend more time worrying about whether 7-year-olds can pass formal examinations than worrying about 7-year-olds learning to interact with other 7-year-olds, make friends, and play together. And yet, this is exactly where we're headed.
Society needs a wake-up call, particularly if it thinks it's worked this one out. Hi-tech toys are just the symptom, not the cause of the problem.
Childhood's End (Score:5, Interesting)
Up until widespread schooling began in the 17th and 18th centuries, the modern concept of childhoood, as a time of play and learning lasting well into your teens, didn't really exist. "Real" childhood, that period where you are more of a burden than a help to your agrarian family, only lasted until you were old enough to start doing chores around the farm. By the time you were in your teens, you were probably starting to think about starting a family of your own.
While there is some controversy about whether modern childhood was "invented" in the 18th century, it certainly changed quite a lot. The changing standard of childhood is a little better understood in Japan, where the concept of modern childhood was largely introduced by globalization in the 19th century [findarticles.com], and was thus studied a little more rigorously than in Europe and America, where it was a more organic process.
What many of us now consider "childhood" (school and play, with hardly any work until late teens) is really a 20th century phenomenon - once the West de-ruralized and mechanized, the amount of work needed to be performed on a daily basis dwindled to the point where child labor, at home or away, wasn't really needed or desired. The Western 1950s-70s were the absolute high-water mark for a childhood of outdoor leisure - not surprisingly, exactly the time when Pullman (and I, and a large chunk of Slashdot) grew up.
As with any nostalgia trip, Pullman (mis)remembers all the highlights of these times, but not the downsides like the often crushing boredom of having absolutely nothing to do on a rainy weekend (unless, like us, your were a geek and read a lot).
Maybe playing Madden 2007 on a rainy day leads to less creative thought than reading "The Mad Scientists Club" for the fifth time, but I don't think Pullman convincingly makes that case.
Re:Childhood's End (Score:4, Insightful)
But I would like to take it one step further and point out that it is also a relatively recent idea that children must be entertained at all times. In this day and age it seems that a child cannot make their own fun; rather, their entertainment must be provided by their parents (or other responsible adults). When did the threat of "go find something to do or I'll find something for you to do" lose its effectiveness?
Also, I have learned that many parents use electronic entertainment (TV, video games, computers, etc.) as a way to not have to deal with the responsibilities inherent in raising children. It seems to me that too many adults aren't willing to have the kids "underfoot" while they are doing things like cleaning house, fixing the car, doing lawn work, etc. However, this attitude has gone on for long enough that there are teenagers (and even adults) these days who leave home and suddenly realize that they don't know how to run a washing machine (as an example).
One of the best ways that children learn is to imitate their parents, and believe it or not children actually like spending time with their parents, just about no matter what their parents are doing. Even if a child is too young to actually help with what the parent is doing, they will be more than happy to play with related tools (e.g. if parent is cooking dinner, child plays with pots and wooden spoons). It may require a little more supervision and (possibly) a lot more noise than plunking your kids in front of the TV while you make dinner... But aren't kids supposed to be noisy and actually require effort to raise?
(And no, I'm not saying that kids can't try a parent's patience and need to be distracted by something, anything quiet far away from where the parent is. I'm specifically talking about people who do this as a matter of course rather than as an exception.)
Parent
Not fast enough! (Score:5, Interesting)
I lied about my age and joined the Army back in the '60's, and two months later had an Army GED. The State of Alaska granted me an actual Diploma when I turned 18. People used to laugh at people with GED's, but now you have to take a GED test before they will let you graduate (in Texas they call it TAKS), and it's not even as hard as the one I took back in the '60's! But if some kid showed up for his Freshman year of High School and passed the TAKS, do you think they'd let him graduate and get a job? NO! He still has to serve the rest of his sentence!
Just wait. The population of the US is getting older. It won't be too long before they lower the age at which young people can go to work to support the old folks on Social Security.
Check this out: http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/multimedia/jtgsoun
My $.02 worth of random commentary (Score:5, Interesting)
He plays outside, paints, draws, runs, jumps, rides his bike, knows basic math (addition and subtraction with numbers less than 20 or so, and I am not sure how high he can count anymore). He knows his letters, and can recognize a bunch of words and is certainly "ready" to read, as the jargon has it. He loves to help me "build". He designed and I constructed a wooden garage for him out of off-cuts, and he got me to buzz round the edges of the roof with my router to give it a nice edge (he knew what the router was for, and could visualize the finished product), and I am trying to find tools he can safely use -- he constructs huge sculptures from offcuts and glue, which he calls "Star Wars things" and then spends several sessions painting them. He goes sledding, swims, jump off the diving board, eats all kinds of foods, and knows that any good breakfast wil have protein, carbs and some fruit.
He also knows Spiderman's real name is Peter Parker, can identify Batman at about 100 yards (as well as Batcat and Batdog, minor deities he and his preschoolmates include in the pantheon on the same footing as Batman himself), and can hum a passable rendition of the Star Wars theme, despite never having been provided with this information by his parents. And he went off to his first day of school with a Superman backpack -- so far as I can see his room has only one other superman, but about four spidermen and a couple of batmen... He can operate a digital camera (he took a lovely shot of his Mum and Boy#2 the other day -- and she tells me that he carefully asked to her to move as he composed the shot on the screen), and work the DVD player.
Bringing up kids is almost always about flexibility and compromise -- in the end, you have to live in your culture and times, even as you try to give your kids the tools they will need to navigate through the world. But a lot of what my son loves to do would not be a part of his life if he spent too much time in front of a screen -- and in the long run, it is much better to experience the natural world first hand than it is to watch it via some electronic simulacrum, as we learn through touch and smell, as well as just sight and sound.
But what I have seen is this. Kids we know with similar backgrounds to us who watch a lot of TV or spend a lot of screen time, are almost always more "jumpy" than kids who don't -- and I am not implying that Boy#1 is any sort of angel (he threw a fit in the supermarket over the weekend that had people turning and staring from a couple of ailses away, and I explained to him that behaving badly wouldn't get him what he wanted -- namely some sugary cereal with a cartoon character on the box), and more likely to initiate violent play -- which my kid will cheefully join in with, at least until he gets hurt.
And if you want to rail against the corruption of modern life, TV is not the only issue -- avoiding shitty convenience food is a huge part of raising happy and healthy kids. I never expected to be a nutrition nazi, but loading kids with sugar does terrible things to their attention span and plays havoc with their emotions as they come down from the rush...
The other thing I have noticed recently is that Boy #1 is completely unable to make a distrinction between a nature program and a commercial (and he certainly does learn from some of the TV he watches) -- he happily told me that "Peanuts is the best video ever" parroting a trai
Re:Current generation fears new technology. (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Parental Involvement # 1 (Score:4, Interesting)
Through trial and error, I have found that what kids NEED is what they crave: Parental attention. These kids love doing nearly anything that involves me helping them out. Whether its schoolwork, some little art activity, building something (I DO have a big box of LEGOs), taking a walk, made-up games, whatever. They are ecstatic that someone will spend time and attention on them.
So if their your kids, your stepkids, your neices and nephews, your friends kids, whatever. Just listen to them, play a game with them (spontaneous made-up games are a favorite), teach them something cool. They'll grow up all right, and you'll be that really cool person who they admire from their childhood.
Parent
Re:A childless adult's observation (Score:4, Interesting)
Fifty years ago, when my father was 9 years old, he and his friends would hop on their bike and ride 3 miles down to the lake. This was along side of an old highway that occassionally saw OTR truckers. They would leave home at noon with instructions "be home before dinner".
Sometimes HIS dad would walk down there to check on them and toss them in the water a few times. Then, they would ride their bikes home when the sun got low.
When I was 11 years old, my father grugingly allowed me to ride my bike 1 mile to a nearby shopping mall with several friends, but gave me a bag of quarters and instructed me to call every hour.
My youngest brother is 13 and is still not allowed out of the "neighborhood" on his own and my mother was horrified at the thought that he "take the bus" to soccer practice, rather than having me drive across town to come pick him up and drive him the 12 blocks over there.
What's the difference?
Statistical rates of violence, bodily harm and child abduction (outside the family) are all at record lows right now. Why are we afraid? Fifty years ago, it was more dangerous to ride your bike down to the lake than it is now.
Why are we afraid?
We, as a society need to ask ourselves this question and come to the conclusion that it is irrational.
Good post.
Stew
Parent