Just a moment ago I read a survey that in a modern family parents spend only 5 hours a week in face to face communication with their children! I felt my danger signals flare.
The common reasons/excuses were watching television, children on their phones or in their rooms.
Helping, training, encouraging our children to be Persons, to find and develop their talents, to instill integrity and compassion, to experience love, to understand the importance of work and participation, to teach critical thinking skills and on and on - these are job descriptions for the position of parent. If these jobs are not done, what happens to the child left to their own devices?
We find ourselves with a generation perhaps unlike any other. They are sometimes called snowflakes because they wilt so easily. We also read that many lack face to face communication skills because they have a life lived primarily with electronic devices. We find a numbness and despair that lead to this huge catastrophe of drug addiction. There are an alarming lists of symptoms of these children who have been marginalized by lack of parenting.
Then there is the problem with the parents who find a television program more important than their children. I wonder how they were parented??? But there is also a decline in honoring what has been sacred for much of human history. Life is sacred. Much of modernity does not act that way. Our nation has seen over 60 million abortions since it became legal in 1973. Discard human life with abandon and then ignore for the most part the children who were born. Life is sacred. We must act that way.
I think for our children to be all they can be is an important goal for us all. We humans need to do some soul searching. As my old Zen master said loudly and regularly, "WAKE UP!!!"
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