So I was chatting with the secretary of our owner’s association in the neighborhood, and talk turned to the menace of the electric mobikes that a few kids had been riding from a couple of months now.
These bikes are fast and totally unsafe both for the rider and the public at large – they criss-cross onto the internal roads without looking, at high speeds…very dangerous for the traffic within the community. But most of all, we are concerned about the little kids who play around the parks and places nearby. Apparently there is no law (am sure there is, have to do some digging) to stop this, but common – what are the parents doing??
Anyway. Bringing up kids nowadays is so much more difficult, and it generally is not the issue with the kids. It’s us parents, who have somehow managed to make this task more onerous than it should be. And as a generation, we have removed that one important checkpoint which previous generations had – the community.
Back in the days, when I was growing up, every one on the street was a potential deterrent to mischief that could possibly be harmful. Am sure we all have been scolded by that passing-by uncle or aunty – strangers elder to us, who forbade us from throwing that stone at a cat or indulging in slightly more damaging possibilities. We did silently curse such people (under our breaths) but were obedient (scared) enough to comply.
Not anymore. Kids nowadays are taught that strangers are bad and to be steered clear of – never mind that they then go online and post their photos and thoughts to anyone and everyone on the internet. Also, adults steer clear of kids and seldom admonish them unless they know the kids personally – to avoid any potential issues with the hyper-protective parents. Why bother – is the general consensus.
Not that good for community living, and surely not for society.
Here is something that I had written a while ago, on the subject. Do have a read:)
As mentioned yesterday, am reading “The Anxious Generation” that is quite startling in terms of the subject matter – children are being rewired (actually have already been) and have transitioned from “play-based” childhood to “phone-based” childhood. A transition that will have lasting repercussions on the human race in general.
I will write separately on the book once I finish reading it – but I did take a step further and read up on what possible alternatives can be created. Jonathan writes – “If parents don’t replace screen time with real-world experiences involving friends and independent activity, then banning devices will feel like deprivation, not the opening up of a world of opportunities.”
Reading further, I found more insight into what laid the grounds for this transition in the first place.
It’s worth noting that many of our current “caution and control” norms were established long before smartphones—laying the conditions for screens to take over childhoods. Kids used to play in the streets, wander neighborhoods, visit classmates, stop at stores, and gain daily life experience in the community. Changes in everything from cars to careers to churches to schools to the built environment to shopping patterns had largely emptied streets of children by the 1990s. With fewer adults around the neighborhood and with those who were left feeling little obligation to keep an eye on their neighbors’ children, parents were already instructing kids to come straight home once school got out rather than hang around the streets or parks, unsupervised.
Another commentator noted:
In the 1950s they [residents] considered the streets to be their home, an extension of their property, whereas today [1995] the streets are, for many people, an alien place. A block is not really a community in this neighborhood anymore. Only a house is a community, a tiny outpost dependent on television and air-conditioning, and accessible to other such outposts, even the nearest ones, almost exclusively by automobile.
Children are developing shallow online connections because they don’t invest time and effort in creating real-world friendships within walking distances of their houses, within their own communities. Observes the writer:
So, let’s circle back around the block to play-based childhoods. Letting children go off on their own is much easier when you know and trust your neighbors and have a relationship with local businesses, congregations, and community groups. My kids regularly play with their neighbors even though the ages do not match. My 11-year-old knows the homes of many of her classmates and walks 5-20 minutes away to reach them on her own. She sometimes goes with a classmate to pick up a pizza or goes alone to buy a few items at the grocery store—both places are several blocks away and a busy street away. No one questions such behavior in our neighborhood because the streets around us are an extension of our home, not an alien place to be avoided. This was once the norm everywhere.
The collective action we need will go beyond getting kids outside (off screens). We will only restore a play-based childhood on a large scale when we recreate a supportive community that calls parents, kids, and neighbors to rediscover the joys of embodied relationships and communal institutions.
A much-needed call to clarity – and a lot of work needs to be done collectively to get our lives back on track. Read the book!