Bridging the (Parent-Child) Divide

“Parents are most Caring, but Ignorant. Children are most Intelligent, but Vulnerable”

The above statement is actually my tag-line for the online and offline initiative of my Secure Childhood project.

One thing we all agree, that with every generation, human beings evolve as a smarter and intelligent specie. Such evolution brings along challenges of its own. And parenting is one of those challenges thrown up by life.

A lot has been written,counseled and dissected about this topic. What we usually term as a generation gap, looks even wider as far as understanding the nuances of technology goes vis-a-vis parent-child relationships. Rapidly changing technology adds to the dilemma and makes the gap look even broader. I have had parents telling me how handicapped they feel keeping pace with their teenagers while using and understanding computers. Students too, in their interaction with me have complained how their parents aren’t tech-savvy and why they prefer not to discuss jargons with them.

My experience, unfortunately shows, that this gap isn’t limited only to tech related stuff. It is also true about non-techie things. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if efforts are made to bridge the gaps in all aspects? Secure Childhood is not just about the technical aspects, its also about efforts to create a warm, loving and trustworthy environment between parents and children.

As I write this, I am reminded of an article written by Steve Pavlina. In brief this is what the article says:

• We as adults make a lot of mistakes and take wrong decisions not only as parents but also as human-beings. The results of these mistakes shows up later in life especially when your kids become teens and situations creating a lot of conflict and stress between parent-child arise.
• Steve goes on to give some advice on how to handle the situation of being trapped as a teenager by your own parents failings. The advice given by him is:

1. Accept the Truth of your situation

2. Take responsibility and exercise your personal authority

3. Communicate your desires and don’t complain

4. See the true intelligence of your parents.

5. Adopt substitute parents ( similar to the advice given by Robert Kiyosaki in his book “Rich Dad, Poor Dad)

6. Recognise that your parents are still right sometimes.

You can read the entire article “Smarter than your Parents” here

In conclusion, I would like to say that Parents are still the most wonderful people we have in our lives, even with their fallacies. They truly care about you even though they may be ignorant about certain things in life.  The collective experiential wisdom gathered by them over their life-time can truly guard children from vulnerabilities – both online and offline.

If you appreciate the views expressed above, then I encourage you to kindly add your comments at the bottom of this post. I would love to hear from you and have an engaging dialogue with my readers.