Essential Excerpts: The Silent Tragedy Affecting Today's Children
What this therapist thinks too many parents are doing wrong, how we can all do a better job giving our kids what they need, and my latest podcast interview.
Hello Bar-Setters!
Today’s Essential Excerpt comes from a parenting article that I’ve shared more than any other. In it, Occupational Therapist Victoria Prooday identifies exactly what is going wrong in the modern parenting paradigm:
“Today’s children are being deprived of the fundamentals of a healthy childhood, such as:
Emotionally available parents
Clearly defined limits and guidance
Responsibilities
Balanced nutrition and adequate sleep
Movement and outdoors
Creative play, social interaction, opportunities for unstructured times and boredom
Instead, children are being served with:
Digitally distracted parents
Indulgent parents who let kids “Rule the world”
Sense of entitlement rather than responsibility
Inadequate sleep and unbalanced nutrition
Sedentary indoor lifestyle
Endless stimulation, technological babysitters, instant gratification, and absence of dull moments
… There are no shortcuts to parenting, and we can’t trick human nature. As we see, the outcomes are devastating. Our children pay for the loss of well-balanced childhood with their emotional well-being.
Parenting is hard and it is made harder by a world where the norms work against us. We all fall short, but I find Prooday’s diagnosis helpful. She goes on to identify some suggestions for parents. These are a great reminder for all of us as we head into the school year:
Offer kids a well-balanced lifestyle filled with what kids NEED, not just what they WANT. Don’t be afraid to say “No!” to your kids if what they want is not what they need.
Provide nutritious food and limits snacks.
Spend one hour a day in green space: biking, hiking, fishing, watching birds/insects
Have a daily technology-free family dinner.
Play one board game a day. (List of family games)
Involve your child in one chore a day (folding laundry, tidying up toys, hanging clothes, unpacking groceries, setting the table etc)
Implement consistent sleep routine to ensure that your child gets lots of sleep in a technology-free bedroom
Teach responsibility and independence. Don’t over-protect them from small failures… :
Don’t pack your child’s backpack, don’t carry her backpack, don’t bring to school his forgotten lunch box/agenda, and don’t peel a banana for a 5-year-old child. Teach them the skills rather than do it for them.
This is just a small slice of the guidelines that Prooday recommends. Check out her article to see the rest.
In Case You Missed It…
Also, I was interviewed by James Geering’s Behind the Shield Podcast this week. Geering is an awesome person who wrote a fantastic book about his experiences as a firefighter. I had a blast sitting down with him for a wide ranging conversation that covers:
My early life and major influences
What my parents did right
My journey into education
The pitfalls in modern education
Standardized testing
What’s missing from our teacher training model
Student mental health
Training the youth athlete
Physical education
What underlies our failed youth development paradigm
How parents can better manage the smartphone and how we should think about preparing our kids for a world where technology often substitutes for human capacity
A couple excerpts:
On the duty to create healthier schools: https://twitter.com/behindts911/status/1689049456170123264?s=20
“In a world where technology so often substitutes for human capacity, the only way for humanity to thrive is to have a clear ideal of human excellence that you inculcate in your culture and that you set as a standard in your culture.” https://share.snipd.com/snip/4eeb5410-29f7-484b-9505-4d709b6e40a0
Thank you for reading and sharing!
Have a great weekend! Carry the fire!
Shane