Blog

The last few years have been unusually harmful to our children. Some of the harm has been the result of parental indifference and a frightening trend that finds parents feeling the need to be their children’s friends instead of their parents. Our children have experienced a decades long downward spiral in global competitiveness in education. In spite of that, educators have decided they don’t have enough to do in teaching reading, writing, arithmetic, civics, history, etc. They’ve taken on social engineering as well. Parents are providing their children with access to the internet at younger and younger ages. Social media, provided by the internet, is chock a block full of things that are inappropriate for most of our young children. We may never know the extent of the damage done by closing our government schools for the COVID pandemic for, in some cases, up to two years. This may be the most critical time in our adult lives for parents to put down their phones and pay attention to what is happening in the lives of their children.

It is understandable that parents were frightened for their children when COVID first appeared in early 2020. Nobody knew how deadly the virus was. Fear of the unknown led us to support the initial closure of schools. As studies were completed, and data was compiled, it became increasingly clear that those least affected by the virus were our children. Schools in other countries remained open during the pandemic. Private schools in the U.S. remained open. Government schools in Florida reopened after only a couple of months. Most government schools remained closed. If educators believe that attending school is beneficial to children they should have been leading the charge to reopen. Alas, the very people who tell us how much they care about our children at millage time, government school teachers, were AWOL. They know how important, for a myriad of reasons, it is for children to be in school. Yet they allowed their unions to keep the government schools closed. It took parents about a year to start pushing back and demanding their children’s return to in-school learning. We must never allow our children to be abused like this again.

Perhaps the only silver lining in the COVID pandemic was that parents, who were forced to stay home, saw what their children were being forced to learn at home. To say there was mass disbelief is an understatement. They found evidence of curricula that was completely inappropriate on many levels. They found that white children were being taught they should be ashamed for being white. Children of color were taught they were helpless victims. Parents alleged finding pornographic books on the shelves of K-12 school libraries. School boards denied the allegations. Then at school board meetings, one after another, parents found the microphone they were speaking into shut off as they read from the books the school boards said didn’t exist. The parents were admonished for reading inappropriate material out loud. Well Duh. They apparently felt the material that was inappropriate to be read to adults was appropriate for K-12 students. To their credit, parents were quick to confront school boards all over the country. They are recalling board members, and running candidates for school board positions. They are slowly winning necessary battles for their children everywhere.

There are things we can do that will have a more immediate and positive impact on our children. While the impact will be more immediate, it will almost certainly be just as difficult. We must decide to be our children’s parents, not their friends. Most children have many friends when they are kids. They only have 2 (if they are lucky) parents. A lost friend can be replaced. They can’t replace a parent. There are things we learned from experience that our children can’t understand. We know intuitively that our children shouldn’t be on the internet for hours a day. Yet because their friends are on for hours we are loathe to cut our kids off. But we must! We must limit the amount of time they are on their devices. We have to preview and limit access to a few innocuous apps, email, and texting. We all laugh when a parent says “my son is 12 growing on 20.” Well guess what. He is 12! There are things that are easily accessible on line that are completely inappropriate, perhaps dangerous, for a 12 year old. We must do everything we can to keep our kids from viewing most of the garbage that is available.

Let’s make an effort to give our kids our undivided attention. When you take your child(ren) to the park, unless you are a heart surgeon, leave your phone at home. Play catch with them. Kick a ball back and forth. Chase them. Push them on a swing. Play with them. Turn your phone off during meals and don’t let your children check messages. Ask them open ended questions about their day, and listen to their answers. What made you laugh today? Did anything bother you? Who did you eat lunch with? Who are your friends? What is your favorite class? What do you like about your teacher? Listen to their answers. You will surely learn a lot about them. Our children need to know they are important to us. Let’s put our electronics away one night a week and read a book with them. Take them to a library and let them pick out the books they’d like to read, or have read to them. On another night play cards, or table games. If they don’t know how to play, teach them. We must give them our undivided attention.

Nothing is more important than our children. For too long we have used electronic devices as entertainment centers and babysitters. In doing so we have witlessly introduced our children to inappropriate, dangerous, perhaps evil, content. We need to begin to reverse that mistake with our older children, and not allow it to get started with our younger ones. They have been used as chattel by teacher unions, and been given short shrift by too many of we parents. If you believe that strong families are important to our country’s future it is time for us to do what we can to make our own families stronger. I hope you found this post interesting and some of the suggestions helpful. If you did please pass it along to those you know with children. Thank you, Bob