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| My children at a very tender age. |
Although it could be subjective and debatable, I think those growing up in the decade of the ‘70s probably had one of the last opportunities to live childhood in all its glory, a stereotypical one that old books describe. One enjoys to look back with nostalgia at the walked path.
TV was limited by the number of
channels and the hours of broadcasting which gave children a great possibility
to explore the world around them and gave them the freedom to be anything they
wanted, using inspiration, imagination and creativity. They could indulge in a
good book, paint, create their own games, ride a bike until midnight in summer,
and learn empirically how to live life to the full. Appreciate real friendship
by knocking on their mate’s door and say ‘Do you want to play?’ Face to face conversations, interaction with
the community or even improve their writing skills with a pen pal in Palestine!
Children in the past played
outside freely, in the street or the woods, which gave them an innate common
sense from a very early age, something that is being lost today. They could
sort the vicissitudes and inconvenient much more cleverly. They were aware of their surroundings and
danger. In psychology it has been said that a child that was able to play with
‘mud’ in their childhood was more likely to have had a happier one. It permits
the contact with nature, improves motor skills and through imagination and role
play, children absorb more, understanding social skills and structures.
I feel we have lost a magical,
unique moment. Nowadays children in the West are a clean cut of a surgery ward.
They have grown up in a super safe, antibacterial, pristine, healthy
environment padded away from awkward circumstances, protected to the point that
they do not know life as we knew it, with the good and the bad. Some parents seem
to have fallen in to the denial world of excuses, turning their children into
absent-minded subjects, disconnected to the world around them.
The loss of the sense of
community has contributed for the formation of self-contained little bubbles, isolated
and detached from what is happening next door, electronic devices are taking
over our lives or transforming some to virtual lives. Unless children are building software, most
likely they are consuming, therefore having everything done for them. Some marvellous aspects of childhood are
killed in this endless hours of “e-consumption”: curiosity and necessity that
could be converted into creation, inventions, and solutions.
Internet, instant communication, electronic
devices have made our life simpler in many ways and in others have created
dependency, emptiness and frustration. There is no excuse, for example, for
parents to say that their child would not stop using the iPad. Who is the
parent and who is the child? Who is in charge? I often ask myself.
A good idea would be restrict the
hours spent on computers, regulate the time for playing computer games on the
weekends, provide children with extra curriculum clubs and music lessons, turn
the TV off when it has exceeded the agreed time. Maybe by forcing them to get
bored, children would start thinking, grabbing the pen and planning, drawing,
writing, kicking the ball, reading, playing their instrument or just watching
the clouds pass by.
