Reponsible Parenting: Understanding Modern Children

As a responsible parent, there’s something absolutely crucial that needs to be remembered about modern children.

I learned about it when I attended my counselling sessions and some of my own adolescent behaviour was explained to me.

Innately programmed into a child from the moment it is born is a prehistoric survival switch that compels them to remain the focus of their parent’s attention. The crying out in the middle of the night may well be for hunger, but also for reassurance.

Because, the switch says that, if their parents do not care about them, they will not feed them or protect them.

Somehow, in today’s children, this program has started to malfunction because, if they can’t get that approval, then any form of attention will do – however negative.

If you’re having a conversation with a friend and they think it has gone on long enough, they will start doing things to put an end to the diversion that takes your gaze away from them.

The more time it takes for you to finish what you are doing and return to them, the more they will try to get a reaction from you.

So, if there is something that they know makes you really cross, that’s what they will do – because it is guaranteed to make you end your current distraction and come back to noticing them.

As they grow older, a teenager’s tactics can become even more destructive. So many adolescents resort to deliberate vandalism or self-harm as a cry for help when they’re drowning in the emotional whirlpool of dealing with all those hormones.

They want to be perceived as grown ups but, at heart, their inner child is still crying out for your attention and approval and, in the absence of any positive reviews, some almost take pride in the list of misdemeanours that they can accomplish in any one day.

They will also watch closely for any sign of weakness and, if their mother and father are battling over different parenting theories, they will actively manipulate this weapon and use it indiscriminately to achieve some sort of parental reaction.

Playing one parent off against the other in order to realise their own ends, consciously and purposely exploiting any indecision without caring about the marital discord that they are helping to foster – just to receive some physical reassurance that they are still loved and cherished. No matter what they do.

If I have learned anything from the break-down of my own marital situation, it is that children need clear behavioural boundaries which are wrapped up in the certain knowledge that their parents love them above anything else.

In our attempts to become more politically correct, modern parenting has seen us try to be friends with our children, rather than role models or arbiters of right and wrong.

We are at the mercy of peer pressure. How many times has your child told you that Mary or Jim or Jonny’s mum lets them do this that or the other, trying to guilt you into a more moderate stance on something?

And, sometimes, as parents, we are guilty of the cardinal sin. Taking the easy way out to avoid an inevitable confrontation.

The problem is that our children need those boundaries and they need us to stand firm whilst enforcing them. Respect and responsibility grow from a learning curve that doesn’t deny them the ultimate goal, but allows them to achieve it gradually through a series of steps designed to teach valuable lessons in awareness and morality.

Today’s offspring need to be cosseted, complimented and made to feel worthy whilst, simultaneously, being shown that they are not the centre of the universe so that they can learn consideration and humility.

But to achieve this end goal, both mother and father have to stick together when it comes to decisions over their upbringing – even if it means privately agreeing to disagree. In front of the children, there must be total harmony about what is considered bad behaviour or inappropriate conduct and also complete agreement about the nature and level of any punishment.

Teenagers do come out the other side eventually but how damaged they will be emotionally depends upon our ability to remain consistent and stick to the path.