Читать книгу You Don't Know Anything...! - Nadir Psy.D. Baksh PhD - Страница 20

Life is so much more complicated than it was at an earlier time when there were few expectations beyond helping with the family chores and contributing to the family workload. In years gone by, the primary emphasis was not on socializing or dating, schoolwork or recreation, but on survival: bringing in the crops before the first winter freeze, tending the cattle, milking the cows, hoping the chickens would lay eggs. If these tasks were not handled, there would be no food, and families would starve. Success was measured not in material possessions, of which there were very few, but in the unity of family: sharing experiences of birth and death, working side by side with a sense of pride and loyalty as an integral member of a tight-knit unit.

In this twenty-first century, materialism has all but snuffed out intangible successes, which have been overshadowed by the “me” society of insatiable appetites fueled by greed and jealousy. Rather than working side by side, people are pitted against each other in fierce competition, vying for jobs and lying for money, which has become the barometer by which our young people have learned to measure success and is the underpinning of anger and depression.

The love of money has become the driving force behind the seventy-hour work week, robbing our children of precious time. Employers foster the notion that everyone is expendable, and in such a competitive world anyone who is unwilling to play by the company rules is simply replaced by someone who will.

For all of our cumulative intelligence and technological progress, we have surged forward but left our children behind. They are being babysat by television sets, their minds captured by violence and sexually inappropriate material. They interact silently with television actors whose sarcasm or racial biases cross the airwaves, invading our children’s psyches. They are being fed junk for their brains and junk for their stomachs. The dinner table is littered with crumpled bags of fast food—wads of salt and grease wrapped in pretty packaging, cooked by someone else’s mother, packaged by someone else’s siblings, and advertised by someone else’s father.

If you take an objective look at just how much quality time you spend with your teens−getting to know who they are actually becoming rather than projecting who you believe they are—you will be pleasantly surprised at their appreciation of your interest in their hopes, dreams, ambitions and disappointments. Instead, some of you think that because you have spent exorbitant amounts of money on your kids’ clothes and activities, or because their social calendar is penciled in for the rest of the year, you have fulfilled your parental duties. You have not. Because your children attend an activity after school every day does not mean they are not being neglected. There must be a balance between activities and home life, between signing up for activities and interacting with family members, between being an integral part of a club and being an integral part of a family. The rules which must be obeyed in school or sports are meant to avoid chaos and keep the activity organized and running smoothly; the rules that children learn at home are valuable lessons in life skills and understanding the human condition. The former cannot be substituted for the latter. Exposure to your heritage and culture, making memories, and bonding are the life lessons your teenagers will take with them and pass on to their children someday.