Should Technology Change How We Rear Children?

The other day I read a newspaper account of young teen agers sending explicit sexual messages via text messaging. The article also suggested that kids have used their cell phones to photograph tests in school and share them with friends and even text message during the test either asking for answers of telling friends about the questions. Further, some had been caught taking and sending obscene pictures of themselves to others. The article made me think.

The content of the messages is sensational and certainly needs to be understood, but there is something else which was not addressed in the article that I believe we should focus on. In my opinion it deserves more attention. We have not successfully adapted to the inroads technology has made in our families. For instance, every minute parents or children play video games, watch TV, use computer games, and etc. is a minute they are not spending with each other. I am not suggesting that all entertainment be curtailed. But, I propose the obvious. Spending time talking, listening, playing, working on projects, praying, learning, and etc. is also time that builds the emotional ties that good relationships are based on. I am as interested in new technology as anyone, but as someone whose professional life has revolved around mental health, child development, and the family I see things from that perspective. It takes a certain about of time and attention and awareness to create and maintain good family relationships. These relationships provide the basis for healthy child development, moral growth, and other forms of success. If the basis for good relationships is not provided or is lost the emotional ties that make parents influential with children are not created. It is as simple as that. And, if those ties do not exist when children need the security of parental wisdom and encouragement from parents’ example they do not find them. I have seen that on many occasions because many of the children and youth I have seen professionally have not been blessed with these powerful and influential emotional attachments with their parents.

This state of affairs implies something else. We need to change our views of parenting to one of family leadership. Here is why. There are two essential pillars of good parenting. These are adjusting our family practices to the individuals in our families and to the environmental conditions we rear our families in. For example, it makes a good deal of sense of have more family rules in a threatening environment than we do when we live where there is less threat to our children. Failure to have more rules when they are needed and less rules when appropriate affects children’s morale about the way their parents lead them. As it turns out this is a major issue for children of every age and affects how willing they are to accept their parents authority.

For years we have been focused on parenting and studied parenting with several names. Some of these are child centered parenting, positive parenting, authoritative parenting, autocratic parenting, permissive parenting and etc. While the ideas these concepts have generated may be useful they do not directly address the two pillars to good parenting mentioned above. Instead, and in virtually every case, they place the parents responses and reactions after those of the child. They do not describe how parents can organize a plan of action for their families and their children. These are better found in the idea of family leadership because the term “leadership,” implies the idea of vision, strategy, forming allies and unity around the strategy, focusing on individuals, and measuring progress toward some objectives. This very “proactive,” orientation appears to be needed to compensate for the intrusion of technology on family life. If parents are passive in response to technology then gradually family time will include more time with the computer and etc. ignoring the need for the essential conditions of high quality family life.

We are late in responding because we did not know how to anticipate what would happen to us and our children, but having seen what happens when we do not get ourselves focused we can learn new forms of leadership and make our families compete more successfully. Our children deserve it.