– Parents want to monitor their children in some way and to participate in these processes. They try to intrude on these networks under assumed names in order to observe what their children are up to. Is this appropriate?
– To be your child’s virtual friend?
– Yes! It’s like opening your child’s diary and reading it while he is out of the house. It’s very important to understand what role a parent has to play and how he should participate in this process. Does he have a place there or not? How should parents acquire information?
– I don’t see parents having any role in the virtual space. Parents have to understand that they have to be friends with their children and discuss everything with them, but not where the child does not want to see them. After all, he’s not a child anymore. We are talking about teenagers, who are pretty much adults already.
The entire foundation of the future person is instilled at ages 6 to 9. After age 9 we only develop whatever was already instilled. In ages 9 to 13, it is already the period when one’s personality forms.
Past the age of 13 there is nothing more that can be done to a person. It is very difficult to change anything in him! All of the data and values that were instilled in him acquire their final form.
This is a big problem. Parents think that this is still their little child! Even when the child turns 20, parents are still willing to run after him and give him orders, trying to protect him from everything. Parents must understand a very simple rule: They cannot intervene in the process of upbringing that we provide. Additionally, parents need to learn to apply the same method of upbringing with their child at home. This amounts to being simple, sincere, and friendly with the child, and showing him that you agree with his upbringing. This is how parents will earn the child’s approval, so he won’t consider them dinosaurs or worse, enemies. Parents have to show the child that they trust him, and in various ways they need to let him understand that they respect the child for taking the path to a new world.
The self-respect that you awaken in a child with your attitude toward him is of utmost importance! It would be profoundly beneficial for parents to watch positively influenced television or internet programs together with their children, meaning programs that show the correct kind of communication models and relationships, including programs that depict all kinds of problems along with their solutions, like a movie for the whole family highlighting the topic of “fathers and sons,” meaning gap between the generations.
– We found that the programs people were most interested in watching together were the ones where children talk about how they perceive their parents. This was very interesting! The children shown in the program were 12 years old, and for the first time in their lives the parents heard what they look like to their children.
There is a saying that goes, “Everybody knows how to cure people, how to run the government, and how to raise kids.” What we found was that parents actually strive to perfect this method. They intervene and give their own advice.
How should the right kind of interaction with parents be set up? How can we give them room to be creative?