Parenting can be tricky; it’s just as easy as walking a tightrope! With the advent of the Digital Age, parenting has become even more convoluted. The techniques are required to adapt to the age of the child, the interests and now, even the online activities. It’s an adaptive process which is dynamic in nature and perhaps, never ends.
Children, especially teens, happen to be a lot more gullible today than they were a few decades ago. While some might contradict our statement but we can safely say that they’re not “street smart”. Kids today grow up with gadgets surrounding their lives. We’ve seen plenty of cases where parents are either too watchful or too negligent. Striking the balance seems like a Herculean task.
One of the most common questions we get from our clients is about Space. How do I know whether I’m giving my child enough space? Am I being too liberal with my kids? But the key to survival is an adaptation. There are no set of rules for parenting. What works for one child may not work for someone else. In fact, this kind of disparity is evident between siblings. That’s simply because each person is unique and there are no set of universal laws that can be applicable to every child.
For example, it’s essential to know the whereabouts of your kids for safety purposes. But beyond that motive, you need to trust your values and principles that you’ve inculcated in them since childhood. On the other hand, a complete disregard of your kid’s progress or friend circle can portray disinterest which in turn can stir up negative feelings within the child.
Kids need to make their own mistakes to learn from them. These are the lessons that they’re bound to carry with them for the rest of their lives. Any turbulence at home, within parent-child relationships, has a detrimental effect on the child’s brain while he’s growing up. In most cases, it becomes the root of problems such as anxiety, depression, lack of self-esteem, stress. What a child should learn in his formative years should be of paramount concern to the family.
That brings us to our real issue– How much space is enough space? The answer to this question is patience. As a parent, you need to realize that your child is just a child. You cannot expect him to know the different kinds of dangers and their consequences. The minute this realization sets in, it’ll get a lot easier to make sense out of their actions, no matter how silly they seem.
A gullible mind is at high-risk today. With weird internet challenges such as The Blue Whale challenge, the A4 Paper Challenge and so on are targeted at such an audience. While some of these games can lead to death, others can cause bodily harm and various other self-esteem issues.