Missing Something? Money, Mobile Phones, Modern Day Parenting

As I explore Child & You section of Rewardme.in I can feel my heart aching a bit underneath my skin. Why? The articles talk about ways that help people to spend more time with their kids. But still my heart aches because of some observations that I encounter almost everyday. That's what makes me share my own views on modern day parenting. 

I am not a parent and I know nothing about parenting. But, still I choose to write about this category because I am an observer and my observations about modern day parenting frighten me at times.

What's there?

One of the most common things that I notice around me is ingestion of mobile phones as physical extension of human body. By physical extension here I mean that people feel handicapped when they don’t have their mobile phones in their hands. Impact of this conventional phenomenon is that I often see parent and child sitting next to each other and indulged in their smartphones.

Imagine a child less than of 5 Years age operating a smartphone, staring at SUPER AMOLED, LED or whatever touch screen which has vibrant colors and harmful rays of course! During my travels in metro I often notice that moms are too tired to indulge with their kids and therefore they hand them over a smartphone, most of the time it is a tablet, with wider screen. Child plays the game and mom continues to scroll through her whatsapp messages and smile. Her attention towards the child diverts only if the gadget falls off the kid’s hands. Most of the time she’s not bothered about the device because it is amongst the cheapest ones, bought precisely to keep the kid busy!

Wow! Isn’t that really disturbing when you see an educated and independent person doing this to her own child? Knowing the fact that how fragile a child’s organs are, how can we force the kid to glue his/her eyes all the time to the screens, which continuously emit harmful rays?

Interestingly, parents find themselves elated when they see their small kids using smartphones frequently as pros. 

That’s not it. Often parents practice their habit or should I say helplessness of watching television and kids sit by their side and stare at the screen. I have seen kids bitching about Big Boss's participants. Can you believe that? 

Since no one has the time to talk about this topic, so I sit in silence and talk to myself. Though, most of the time there is endless conflict but some conclusion does appear at some point.

Why people hand over mobile phones to their kids?

• May be they are too busy with their lives that they don’t want their kids to disturb them. As a result, they teach them to be busy the same way aka staring at mobile phones.
• There might be a case that they don’t have time…at all! Time to notice that their kid is losing his/her eyes by staring at useless screens.
• Modern parents seem to have forgotten their fun loaded childhood, where playing meant going out in the park, running around, cycling and doing several outdoor activities.
• May be they find it very enchanting and motivating that their 2 or 3 year old son or daughter can operate a smartphone. Precisely, if a next gen kid cannot operate a smartphone at the age of 2-3, he/she has a very dark future. Uff! What pressure current generation is going through! Thank God I was born long before than this millennium drama. 

What's missing?

If we look back in the blissful childhood we had, we would realize that a lot is missing from millennium generation's life. May be we did not have high tech gadgets but little blissful things were there, which defined childhood in its true sense. Let's recall what all those blissful things were:

• Swinging in the park with mommy and daddy.
• Playing cricket with Dad in the backyard.
• Learning to ride bicycle with Daddy
• Spending time with sibling.
• Sleeping to the lullabies sung by mom.
• Talking to mom & dad with their full attention on us.
• A lot more that didn't require any gadgets, but just time and attention of our parents. 

I wish the world grows for betterment, but we manage to uphold the good values and treasured ways of growing up. 

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