Real Time Parenting

Real Time Parenting

It’s impossible to be a parent in 2016. Living constantly under a viral microscope of social media has all but dashed any hope parents ever had.With every move documented in real-time on social media, parents seem to have lost control of their real lives. What has for years been a cute story at the dinner table about the time Ma lost you as a kid at the local mela  will today be a hotly contested topic---that too amid strangers online who feel they not only have the right to comment and judge but also to take action, in the form of harassment, badgering, or even phone calls to authorities. There is no such thing as an honest mistake for parents anymore.

Perfect parenting has never existed; but before the onslaught of social media we didn’t hear about the traumatic accidents and close calls as much. We can’t spank our children because some may term it as child abuse. We can’t give in to their tantrums because that would mean we are spoiling them; we cannot stick up for them or discipline because we would just be adding to the problem. If we hover over them and try to protect them from getting into trouble that would be “helicoptering” and if  we don’t, it would be negligence !

Don’t expect kids to think logically;they just do not respond to plans and persuasion ; they do not care about consequences. What do you do then, when your son is throwing tantrum, screaming and crying because you did not get him his favourite icecream or you forbade your daughter from going to a late night disco party? If they were an employee, you could fire them, but parents cannot.

Charulata Ravi Kumar ,columnist, leadership coach for corporate, teaches communication and leadership at premier colleges in India. Here she talks at length about the challenges of parenting in the 21 st Century.

 Dr Spock may have been the ultimate in parenting for a child’s unidimensional world of Mommy, Daddy & Me. But in today’s new universe the extended family includes Uncle Facebook, Aunt Amazon, Friends Myntra, Koovs, Twitter and Youtube and Mentors Scoopwhoop, Tinder, Snapchat and of course Best friend What’s App. We used to worry about the friends our children played with, the neighborhood we live in or even the TV programs they watch. Boy! Weren’t those the easy times! Today, we worry why they have only cyber friends, why is the neighbourhood only a small screen and why is it social media over TV.

“We parents are hard to please aren’t we? But imagine the plight of our children. The new universe they live in has them at the epicenter with the numerous social media influencers tugging at them in all directions. Their life is changing real time. Information surrounds them unabashedly, leading them to believe completely in all that is thrown at them. Resisting this will only distance them from us parents.”

“We parent’s are losing power over children and  this fear is turning us into control freaks, suspicious of everything and everyone around them. We snoop on them, we preach to them, we denounce their world as bad. We want them to learn everything. But only everything that WE want them to learn. We impose our preconditioned rights and wrongs on them and want them to be … well… like us. “

Charulata believes it is time for parents to change. “ the game of power has to change”, she says, adding, “parents are NOT always right. Imposing our value systems, philosophies and principles will only alienate them from us. These must be used as guiding thoughts alone and not to rule. Statements like “We always obeyed our parents… we never talked back… we never questioned rules and customs” etc are so passé. These are false benchmarks created to validate our power plays on them. We must encourage our children to question and challenge. It is the very seed of innovative thinking and free spirit. “

“Resistance to the new world of Social Media has to change.  Just because this was not our world does not make it bad. Its inevitability demands its embrace. Sensitizing our children to its limits and repercussions of overuse will need to be constantly administered--=in doses of support, not forceful implants. We need to allow them the freedom to navigate through the many layers of digital cacophony and in doing so they will discover the good, the bad and the ugly.

India has one of the world’s highest rates of suicide among people aged between 15 years and 29 years.As per a WHO report the pressures of academic performance is a key factor in this. Life stresses for them have become intense and support to overcome these are not keeping up.

“When your child picks up the ipad to surf for games and songs, don’t be suspicious; enjoy their discovery with them. I have rekindled my love for music, video games and JLT fun-time.  Maroon 5 and Taylor Swift, and games like Pinball and Immortals have brought out the young teen in me once again.”, she says.

We parents lived in one world. They live in two – the virtual and the real are now blended. Rather than resisting and shunning their world as evil, we must understand it deeper. That is if we want to help our kids in their journey through this new world and not just parent in the old-world way.

Because we parents are history and our children are carving out a new future.

Are we ready for them?