‘The children of nowadays’, is an all-time saying that affects every generation but the meaning for different generations differ because for the present generation, it is a language used to excuse parental laxity and failure.
So many parents today are so lazy to learn although few parents are doing their best but what is a few in the midst of a fast growing children population?
Parents has sold parenting to children allowing children to take charge of their own upbringing with the idea that they know more than do the parents that gave birth to them tolerating children excesses as exploration and intelligence.
Truly the age we are in is a fast growing age that anyone who is not fast enough will be left behind because smartness is a necessity these days to cope with the exigesis of this generation.
Growing up in those days of the past generation, parents teach their children how to tune a television, parents drive their children around in their cars and many other things but today children teach their parents to use almost everything especially smart devices because parents often says, “it’s children world, they know better”, but why can’t parent?.
Worse still children now drive their parents around in their parent’s car because parents take that as a pride making children to lose control and see parents as non-entities.
All these are the result of not paying attention to learning that will help a parent to be parents indeed because a check on children that are getting out of control shows that nine out of every ten of such children are those that are controlling their parents.
In the days gone by, parents spend time learning, waking up early to prepare for their children, staying up late thinking of how to help their children, seeking counsel and rubbing minds with other parents so that they can be better parents.
Those were days when parents say, “what children sees while on top of a tree, elders have seen before…”, “no matter how much new garments a child has, he cannot have much more rags than the elderly”.
Days when parents were bold to confront their children with their bigger ideas than their children, when children wonder where and how their parents acquire so much wisdom telling their peers, “my dad is a wise man”, “my mum is specially gifted”.
They could see the effort their parents were putting to acquire real knowledge, not necessarily education, and amass wealth of understanding that they couldn’t acquire through education.
Today, parents have got disconnected from their children because of disparity in knowledge especially as it relates to technology.
Most children now see their parents below their class, not because they are poor, but because parents are not edging up with the current realities of the present and future generation.
As the children’s day is celebrated today, reference is on the past generation when the parents of today were young children growing up, the songs, the stories, the special attractions etc. everything is a showcase of the past because it’s as if parents today are leaving no legacy to showcase.
To reconnect with the present generation, parents will need to reflect on the values impacted into them by their predecessors who were champions in parenting in spite of all the odds and mistakes yet they produced a legacy that we can be showcasing today.
Think about the songs! I listened to children performing songs on different platforms today but surprisingly you can’t see those children performing the songs by today’s parents who are artists but all the songs were the songs of those days.
However, not that all the songs today are bad but the value of those days’ songs have higher premium than those of today.
The world is becoming a smart world and every parent must get smarter to reconnect with the children so that parents will not lose relevance and lose their children to extremities.
Whatever children are learning, parents needs to learn rather than selfishly placing interest only on personal choice because parents must always be ahead of their children to carry them along and be connected to them for better parenting.
Thanks to GOOGLE, ChatGPT and other search engines and AI learning machines creating opportunity for everyone, parents and children to learn on the go, for everyone to take advantage without language barrier because AI has made interpretation of languages on almost everything online possible.
Moreover, for those that cannot read, AI can do the reading in any language of your choice while you listen.
Parents must start learning and stop whining, giving excuses so that they can help the children become the good leaders of tomorrow by connecting to make the children what they ought to be.
The children’s day celebration should not necessarily be parent’s day celebration but a reflection for parents to ask and answer the following questions:
How connected are you to your children?
How are you influencing your children, positively or negatively?
Are you ahead of your children or you are behind them?
Are you parenting your children or your children are parenting you?
In all, parents should shun laziness, idling. Parents should work harder, learn wider, and allow no reason for any excuse why your children should not succeed you.