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The deluge of information available freely to anyone online places an urgent demand on parents, guardians, and mentors, to provide adequate guidance and to set up personal accountability structures that would help #teenagers navigate and process this information.
This is not a call for censure, but an appeal for care when dealing with young adults so that intentions toward them are not misunderstood. We cannot afford for our youth and adolescents to misread our intentions and thus disconnect from us.
Parents, especially, must adapt to the evolving times and seasons we live in. Many children do not trust that their parents understand them enough and would rather talk to friends who they believe are as enlightened as they are, and less judgmental than parents/elders.
Parental roles should neither be dictatorial nor judgmental, but should nurture, guide, protect and promote responsibility in wards.
There is a story about a teenage boy who used coded communication with his friends on Facebook so that his #parents wouldn’t know what was happening. This evolved to watching porn, and then sharing illicit sensual content with his friends in a Facebook group.
When this group was discovered by the parents, their reactions were full of anger and negative emotions. However justifiable their anger was, the lack of balance to it caused an emotional and communication rift with the boy.
In the times we live in, the methods, timing, and delivery of discipline need to evolve.
The value of correction and discipline may not be immediately apparent to the child/teen, and sometimes their perception of parental motives can colour their responses and cement a disconnection with parents.
So parents, here are a few points to help:
1. Be intentional about building closely knit #relationships with your #kids.
2. Find a technique that works best for particular #children.
1. Be intentional about building closely knit #relationships with your #kids.
2. Find a technique that works best for particular #children.
3. Create the time to attend to their needs, both physically and emotionally, right through every phase of their growing years.
4. Get to know their close #friends without being intrusive or overbearing
5. Build #friendship and trust with your words and actions.
4. Get to know their close #friends without being intrusive or overbearing
5. Build #friendship and trust with your words and actions.
