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Pester Power...
Wednesday 14 July 2010
Categories: Media Influence, Parenting, Self-esteem
Pity poor parents. In this “must have” culture they are besieged and beleaguered, pestered and plagued by their children demanding on trend clothes and the latest gadgets. If they dare to resist they are made to feel an inadequate parent, a failed provider and yet…
Children who are supplied with state of the art media toys spend far less time interacting with their families. Such children (and adults!) can become isolated in their well equipped rooms, immured from reality, unable to amuse themselves unless they have access to their toys. They have no need to develop that “interior life” that is the hallmark of thoughtful, sensitive adults.
And often the parents who provide everything they are asked for are the very same parents who enrol their children to every available club and activity, fearing that unless these children are kept busy they will… what? Get bored? But that is the stimulus for creativity, imagination, self sufficiency. I can hear my mother’s voice: “Only boring people get bored”! Have undiscovered talents? The reverse could happen – the child becomes so pressured that they resist. The truly talented and passionate will let you know where their enthusiasms lie.
If you fill up your child’s life with activities she will never experience the delights of gently pottering and pondering, of self sufficiency.
If you give your child everything she asks for you are feeding her materialism. You are also echoing the belief that people matter for what they have rather than who they are.
Teach her instead to play, to converse, to read and to think. Thus you will equip her for a rich and fulfilling adulthood.
I absolutely agree that children should be encouraged to play, talk, read and think. I worry that the current generation of children may be far less reflective than we were. They seem able to cope with a huge range of stimuli, but to have lower powers of concentration and less ability to absorb themselves in one task and to reflect on their experiences. As a teenager and later at university in the 1970s I wrote a lot of letters to friends and family. Writing about what was happening in my life and thinking about how I felt about it was hugely helpful in encouraging me to reflect on and to process my experiences. Similarly, I have kept a diary for a long time, and that encourages reflection too. My diary musings are private and totally honest – I certainly wouldn’t want to share my thoughts with the world at large! Writing letters and diary/journal entries gives us something that instant messaging/chatrooms/texts/emails and blogs don’t – it encourages us to reflect on our lives and leaves us something (replies to letters/old diaries and journals) which are great memorabilia.
Jill Berry