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10 facts about kids today that are hard to come to terms with
Our children, as strange as it may sound, are not at all like us. The influence of progress, a different education system, new values and idols – upbringing consists of many components. Our children are representatives of a different generation, it is impossible to bring them up in the old traditions. Why so, and how our children are so strikingly different from us, says healthy-food-near-me.com expert, candidate of psychological sciences, practicing psychologist Tatyana Pavlova.
Now digital assistants are so firmly established in our lives that even homework cannot be done without them. Parents buy smart watch phones for schoolchildren in order to be constantly in touch, give game consoles for the holidays, and classes with a tutor are held on Skype. If you want to protect your child from the influence of devices, you most likely will not succeed: even in elementary school, a student without a smartphone is an exception to the rule. Adults are worried: children don’t like to read, but you can’t take them off their tablets, but at their age we played in the yard and were happy. In addition, vision deteriorates from gadgets. And it is true.
Tatiana Chernigovskaya, a well-known Russian scientist in the field of neuroscience and psycholinguistics, says that gadgets change the functioning of the human brain not for the better: memory, attention, thinking, etc. deteriorate. more than two hours a week. And all this leads to the formation of a new reality. Which? Still to be explored. It remains for parents to control the time that the child spends with digital devices, to organize leisure activities without gadgets.
Children are easily influenced
Someone else’s opinion can become true for them. They are also dependent on brands, subject to the influence of advertising. Young viewers do not have time to want something, as bright advertising from TV screens already shapes their needs and desires. It should be noted that children are vulnerable to aggressive marketing. Therefore, parents need to control as much as they can, teach the child to hear and understand their needs, form their interests and desires, and be able to critically interpret information.
As a result, they surf the Internet and watch videos. Even small children are more often interested not in cartoons, but in videos like “Nastya got a dollhouse” or “Masha in Disneyland”, etc. And the opinion of bloggers is trusted more than any other sources. This phenomenon can be observed especially in adolescence, when the authority of parents or school teachers in the eyes of children is greatly reduced. Talk to children, build trust, be wise and patient. This is corny, but very difficult.
Parents are concerned about how to feed their child wholesome food and choose really high quality products from a huge assortment of products, and serve him junk food and sweet soda. In adolescence, food becomes an attribute of a kind of belonging to the collective. When they say: “You are in the subject!” It doesn’t matter that the food may be harmful and not very tasty.
What should parents do? It is important to instill in a child a culture of eating from early childhood. For example, the famous psychologist Frederick Perls drew parallels between the way food and information are absorbed. The ability to slowly absorb food, chewing thoroughly, will form the habit of being critical of information, not absorbing it without control, but analyzing and filtering.
They insist on unnecessary things.
This is typical of child psychology: to wish the embodiment of all your desires, even the most fabulous ones (remember Santa Claus). True, someone’s dreams are quite real, for example, to have a pet in the house, while someone’s dreams are unrealizable (to fly to the moon). The baby’s desires can pour in as if from a cornucopia: I saw a bauble from a friend, I want one for myself, and then another, bright toys beckon in the store, etc.
This is how the consumer habit and desires unsaturation are formed. Only parents fulfill one request, do not have time to exhale, as the child directly speaks about the next. The enjoyment period for a new purchase is very short. This is largely due to the fact that adults themselves strive to give their child as much as possible, as if embodying their childhood dreams (I did not have such a machine, let my son have it). However, the child very quickly begins to take the efforts of the parents for granted, devaluing the efforts of adults. Therefore, it is very important from childhood to learn to distinguish between necessary purchases from emotional ones.
Sometimes they are too superficial
Superficial perception of phenomena, the formation of a quick opinion, judgment by the picture. This is a consequence of the multitasking of the modern high-speed world. The child is forced to process a huge flow of information every day. Pay attention to how children react to the number of likes in social networks: this is how they rate not only the published information and photos, but also the subscriber (he is my friend, because he likes and writes good comments).
They do not cherish what they have
Many are now of the opinion that it is easier and cheaper to throw something out and buy a new one than to repair it. From TV screens we are advised to get rid of trash, throw out unnecessary clothes, etc. And children take it literally. The spirit of the new time, when things are not protected and not repaired, but changed.
Remember how in our school years we pasted torn pages of textbooks with paper that had been in circulation for more than one year and had time to get pretty worn out, how we darned things – tried to extend the time of use? Nobody says that you need to turn into Gogol’s Plyushkin and save up all sorts of rubbish, but it is necessary to teach a child to be frugal.
The habit of not being like everyone else, standing out from the team, being special. At the same time, whole communities of people similar to each other are being formed, who do not want to be like everyone else. This phenomenon is common during adolescence, and usually goes away with growing up. Children seem to be trying on different images, looking for themselves.
It’s easier for kids to make friends virtually
Many people easily make acquaintances online, find soul mates and can talk for hours, and when they meet in person, they cannot find a couple of words to keep the conversation going. Children repeat us adults. The joker and the joker in reality is a closed, angular teenager, the impudent student in the chats, in fact, turns out to be a quiet, three-grade student, whom you “can’t even think of”. Teens communicate more willingly in chats, preferring virtual communication to real one. On the streets, you can often observe the following picture: a group of teenagers sits with their heads buried in their phones. Moreover, they can correspond with each other. Virtual communication is easier than real, more psychologically safe. Therefore, its share will only increase. And in many respects it depends on the parents how they can saturate the child’s life with real communication.
Today’s youth has an idea that you can live easily, without straining, doing only what you want. This is partly facilitated by social networks, where only a beautiful idle life is shown through a photo. Therefore, here advice to parents can be given this: to teach children goal-setting, to build a plan for the implementation of their affairs, to explain the difference between illustrative pictures on the Internet and real life.