The End of Innocence
I'm sure if asked directly there would be very few parents who would willingly and openly acknowledge a desire to end the innocence of their children. And yet, what I keep seeing is how deep the coma is for many parents as they thoughtlessly expose their children to adult situations and adult content.
The beginnings of this rant have been a long time coming. This particular horse that I am riding is not the one of deliberate destruction of childhood innocence that seems to be provoked by adults who, having lost their own innocence and sense of wonder far too early in life, seek and destroy it in the children around them. Seeking to slake their thirst, these monsters were someone else's victims and the cycle continues with horrifying results. We are familiar with these stories as they are in the news, the subject of numerous TV dramas and may have even touched our own lives - but this is not what this post is about.
This post is about the subtle way that parents erode the innocence of their offspring. And I must confess, I find this even more puzzling than outright molestation. It is subtle, unintended and I believe just as harmful. It sets children up with adult information long before they can fully understand how to manage this information. They are put at risk by their literacy in adult content.
What really sparked my disbelief and outrage was a date night with my husband on Friday. We decided to go and see a newly released movie. The rating was 14+ and as we sat and watched the credits roll and the patrons leave we were astonished at how many families with children well under that age were present with their parents. I'm talking about a 5 to 8 year old crowd. Given the graphic content and innuendo in this movie, we couldn't imagine exposing our own 5 year old to this type of content. I know he would have had questions and been confused by more than one scene.
Although I believe in open communication, I don't believe that it is enough to have open conversations with children at this age about what they see in movies that were not intended for their viewing anyway. This is largely because the context set in a movie is either pure fantasy or well beyond their current capacity to make sense of their own body responses and subsequent confusion. Children are marvelous in their capacity to absorb information and make sense of their worlds but our mixed messages about what is okay for entertainment become scrambled and conflict with what is not okay outside of the realm of entertainment. Entertainment that comes in the form of movies, cartoons, music, television and conversations that they are pivvy to.
And just when did gratuitous violence become entertainment anyway? My husband was recounting an experience he had while shopping in a video game store when a child of about 7 or 8 years old was crying and pleading with the sales clerk as he wanted to purchase a copy of Grand Theft Auto. The clerk refused to sell it to him. The clerk was explaining to the boy and his parents that there was an age restriction due to the extremely graphic violence in this particular game. My husband was completely shocked when the parents cast aside this information and joined their child in pleading for the clerk to make the sale to their child. Shouldn't it be a clue when the very store/clerk that earns its living from selling games is telling you, "this one isn't appropriate for your child"?!
I have to wonder how many of these children are the same ones that are medicated, labelled as classroom problems, and later become aggressive and/or promiscuous to the point where their parents are struggling and failing to keep them safe. How many of these children become easy targets for those that are looking to prey on what is left of their innocence? The desensitization has begun. They are familiar with sex and violence as part of life and at times seem unable to fully separate fantasy and reality.
It has been a tenant in scientific circles that children are in a hypnotic state until around the age of 5 as part of their process for learning and discovery. This means that they are both highly impressionable and pretty much set on receive mode with little opportunity to critically evaluate the sensory information that they are being bombarded with. The bits of information that their bodies are unable to assimilate and metabolize, stay with them, often for years, awaiting a time when they can be integrated and metabolized in the body. This is true for all of us and yet, until the moment of metabolization, these pockets of stored information can influence many of our future experiences, sometimes causing us to respond in ways that make very little sense to us and possibly in ways that are not supportive of who we are in the process of becoming. Perahaps this is the place where fantasy and reality begin to meld, losing their edges and influencing behavior. Knowing this, why would we choose to add anything further to our children's legacy?
I have to wonder about the parents in all of this. Have we simply grown lazy ourselves? Is it just easier to say "yes" repeatedly rather than suffer through the multitude of challenges that a refused child can throw our way? Are we more invested in being a friend than being a safe-haven for our children. I believe that as much as I want to be friends with my child, his well- being is my responsibility. As much as he is an authority on his own experience, it is up to me to stand between him and the rest of the world, opening the space in which he can explore gradually and with the knowledge of safety and support. It isn't always easy and I sometimes find that in being a loving parent, our friendship suffers some ups and downs, however, I can always be relied on. My relationship as Mom trumps my relationship as friend. He will have lots of friends throughout his life but I'm his Mom.
Maybe it is that parents are wrestling with their own fatigue and the coma inducing affects of a life of disconnection. If we aren't able to see and feel clearly for ourselves, it becomes very difficult to build the observation and rapport skills that are essential aspects of parenting. If we are seeking to fit in and feel uncomfortable in our own skins because of experiences in a peer group from the past, then we begin to parent from our own unresolved issues and overlook our child's unique needs. It is not acceptble for to us to live vicariously through them and yet how often is that the case? We need to understand how to honour our own internal references and stand firm in our authenticity, acting independently in the face of the many external reference points that exist. I believe this is how you set about teaching your child how to stand alone in the face of peer pressure.
The beginnings of this rant have been a long time coming. This particular horse that I am riding is not the one of deliberate destruction of childhood innocence that seems to be provoked by adults who, having lost their own innocence and sense of wonder far too early in life, seek and destroy it in the children around them. Seeking to slake their thirst, these monsters were someone else's victims and the cycle continues with horrifying results. We are familiar with these stories as they are in the news, the subject of numerous TV dramas and may have even touched our own lives - but this is not what this post is about.
This post is about the subtle way that parents erode the innocence of their offspring. And I must confess, I find this even more puzzling than outright molestation. It is subtle, unintended and I believe just as harmful. It sets children up with adult information long before they can fully understand how to manage this information. They are put at risk by their literacy in adult content.
What really sparked my disbelief and outrage was a date night with my husband on Friday. We decided to go and see a newly released movie. The rating was 14+ and as we sat and watched the credits roll and the patrons leave we were astonished at how many families with children well under that age were present with their parents. I'm talking about a 5 to 8 year old crowd. Given the graphic content and innuendo in this movie, we couldn't imagine exposing our own 5 year old to this type of content. I know he would have had questions and been confused by more than one scene.
Although I believe in open communication, I don't believe that it is enough to have open conversations with children at this age about what they see in movies that were not intended for their viewing anyway. This is largely because the context set in a movie is either pure fantasy or well beyond their current capacity to make sense of their own body responses and subsequent confusion. Children are marvelous in their capacity to absorb information and make sense of their worlds but our mixed messages about what is okay for entertainment become scrambled and conflict with what is not okay outside of the realm of entertainment. Entertainment that comes in the form of movies, cartoons, music, television and conversations that they are pivvy to.
And just when did gratuitous violence become entertainment anyway? My husband was recounting an experience he had while shopping in a video game store when a child of about 7 or 8 years old was crying and pleading with the sales clerk as he wanted to purchase a copy of Grand Theft Auto. The clerk refused to sell it to him. The clerk was explaining to the boy and his parents that there was an age restriction due to the extremely graphic violence in this particular game. My husband was completely shocked when the parents cast aside this information and joined their child in pleading for the clerk to make the sale to their child. Shouldn't it be a clue when the very store/clerk that earns its living from selling games is telling you, "this one isn't appropriate for your child"?!
I have to wonder how many of these children are the same ones that are medicated, labelled as classroom problems, and later become aggressive and/or promiscuous to the point where their parents are struggling and failing to keep them safe. How many of these children become easy targets for those that are looking to prey on what is left of their innocence? The desensitization has begun. They are familiar with sex and violence as part of life and at times seem unable to fully separate fantasy and reality.
It has been a tenant in scientific circles that children are in a hypnotic state until around the age of 5 as part of their process for learning and discovery. This means that they are both highly impressionable and pretty much set on receive mode with little opportunity to critically evaluate the sensory information that they are being bombarded with. The bits of information that their bodies are unable to assimilate and metabolize, stay with them, often for years, awaiting a time when they can be integrated and metabolized in the body. This is true for all of us and yet, until the moment of metabolization, these pockets of stored information can influence many of our future experiences, sometimes causing us to respond in ways that make very little sense to us and possibly in ways that are not supportive of who we are in the process of becoming. Perahaps this is the place where fantasy and reality begin to meld, losing their edges and influencing behavior. Knowing this, why would we choose to add anything further to our children's legacy?
I have to wonder about the parents in all of this. Have we simply grown lazy ourselves? Is it just easier to say "yes" repeatedly rather than suffer through the multitude of challenges that a refused child can throw our way? Are we more invested in being a friend than being a safe-haven for our children. I believe that as much as I want to be friends with my child, his well- being is my responsibility. As much as he is an authority on his own experience, it is up to me to stand between him and the rest of the world, opening the space in which he can explore gradually and with the knowledge of safety and support. It isn't always easy and I sometimes find that in being a loving parent, our friendship suffers some ups and downs, however, I can always be relied on. My relationship as Mom trumps my relationship as friend. He will have lots of friends throughout his life but I'm his Mom.
Maybe it is that parents are wrestling with their own fatigue and the coma inducing affects of a life of disconnection. If we aren't able to see and feel clearly for ourselves, it becomes very difficult to build the observation and rapport skills that are essential aspects of parenting. If we are seeking to fit in and feel uncomfortable in our own skins because of experiences in a peer group from the past, then we begin to parent from our own unresolved issues and overlook our child's unique needs. It is not acceptble for to us to live vicariously through them and yet how often is that the case? We need to understand how to honour our own internal references and stand firm in our authenticity, acting independently in the face of the many external reference points that exist. I believe this is how you set about teaching your child how to stand alone in the face of peer pressure.
How much of parenting is influenced by guilt? Stressed out, busy parents who are unable to give to themselves and have even less to give to their children will often over compensate for their absence, opting to fill it instead with stuff. Guess what, kids know the difference! Just like you do. It may require you to take stock of your own life to change this situation. Having a clear set of priorities that are meaningful for you is the key. Not priorites that belong to someone else but ones that actually mean something to you as an individual. In stopping to take stock, you will likely be quite amazed at how many of these priorities are not actually your own.
You can't give what you haven't got - as motivated as you might be. It begins with you as a person. Not you as a parent, wife, former geek or cheerleader. It is who you are underneath the labels and masks, underneath the expectations and disappointments in your own life. When you are willing to face and claim those aspects of yourself, you can emerge from the coma of habituated responses that sound like your mother's or that seem to keep you on a treadmill in your life and by extension, in your family. Change begins with you first and then, it is my fervent hope that change will come for our children too.
Children have a right to the space that innocence and wonder create. Its never too late to recapture our own sense of wonder and discovery and by extension, hold open that precious space for our children. They can become wise without the loss of innocence. Its time to look closely at our own motives that rush them into maturity and prematurely brings about the end of their innocence.
You can't give what you haven't got - as motivated as you might be. It begins with you as a person. Not you as a parent, wife, former geek or cheerleader. It is who you are underneath the labels and masks, underneath the expectations and disappointments in your own life. When you are willing to face and claim those aspects of yourself, you can emerge from the coma of habituated responses that sound like your mother's or that seem to keep you on a treadmill in your life and by extension, in your family. Change begins with you first and then, it is my fervent hope that change will come for our children too.
Children have a right to the space that innocence and wonder create. Its never too late to recapture our own sense of wonder and discovery and by extension, hold open that precious space for our children. They can become wise without the loss of innocence. Its time to look closely at our own motives that rush them into maturity and prematurely brings about the end of their innocence.
1 comment:
The subconcious plays such a big part in our parenting behaviors.
These behaviours are simply modelled to us in the early years of our lives, and we take them as unquestioned fact... that is just the way things are done.
With the busyiness of our lives now a day, we look forward to coming home at the end of our day and "relaxing".
Forgetting our children are indeed children, who need to laugh, play and be in awe of things around them.
Too many times do we come home from the office and throw up our hands and expect our children to amuse themselves, in solitary (or at least not bothering Mommy or Daddy).
They turn to tv, movies, internet, video games and we buy them, it keeps them busy and out of our hair.
And then it gets to be too late. Our children are all grown up. They don't want to engage with their parents, they have created a life without you, one that they created so they could get by.
We need to stop... and begin to take ownership of our actions/lack of actions and stop blaming our children.
We need to engage with them, love them, laugh with them, play with them, comfort them... SEE them for who they are and who they are becoming.
It isn't too late.
Thank you Anita for your entries on Parenting.
Big Hugs!
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