Confinement of our Children is Unnecessary and Leads to Lack of Independence and Basic Skills.
We face an issue that not only leads to attention loss but also loss of independent thought and the feeling of being able to play freely without adult supervision. Schools and the education system also play into this, but I'll get into that later.
Do I Apply To This Problem?
Now, I am no longer a kid, so I cannot speak on behalf of the kids currently in school, but my brother is now in high school, so I can turn to him for an insider perspective. But no, I can't because my brother is on the autistic spectrum, so his experience is already different than the average kid's.
I bet you are wondering why I cannot use my childhood as a basis for whether or not the sheltering of children and the confinement of the school curriculum leads to more anxiety, less creativity and independence, and using your curiosity to gain problem-solving skills.
The two schools I attended before college were fine. Sure, you still had MASSIVE academic responsibilities, but there were other things the schools had to offer. St. Bridget ensures all students get a period of gym class once a week, either on Mondays or Wednesdays, and all students get a recess before or after lunch. East Catholic, because it is a high school, did not have a break time but more than made up for it with its study halls. As long as you didn't have too many classes, a student could have 1 or 2 (at most) study halls during the day that provided a break from class so students could do work, study, or relax and let off some anxiety and be more accessible.
Both had extra-curricular activities and outstanding sports teams (one of my classmates from East Catholic went on to become drafted to the Kansas City Royals for their minor league division), so they were not lacking in ways to socialize. I did not feel looked down upon or forcefully lectured. It felt to me like a comfortable learning environment where, over time, I met my longtime friends I still have today.
Classmate Frank Mozzicato signs with the Kansas City Royals.
What About Outside of School?
Now, I can't only talk about school because the issue concerns how parents are "confining" children's actions at home by not letting them experience doing tasks on their own in fear of their safety or making mistakes. Looking through Stolen Focus, the chapter on this topic showed me how outrageous the masses at large were paranoid about letting children be on their own in public spaces. I know why they are the way they are, given how Columbine and other school shootings happened in recent memory, but we need to realize when too much is too much.
The book even mentioned how the shift in societal norms for children was so dramatic that…
“it was as if kids couldn’t even be allowed to see what freedom might look like”
I find this very puzzling. You raise children so they will one day go into the world WITHOUT their parents and have to be independent and become those parents themselves if they choose to. So why rob them of gradually learning how to be independent at all?
One Factor Leading to this Paranoia is Fiction
People only think it's dangerous out there for their children because often, they see something fictional (a TV show or a movie) and try to apply those scenarios to the real world. Many get so caught up in the fiction that they forget reality is different on many levels. Those scenes on TV or in movies are scripted and made that way ON PURPOSE, but they also have to be somewhat believable. Otherwise, you risk having the audience lose their suspension of disbelief. That leads to the opposite effect of people thinking it is all so realistic that it could happen to them, and thus, they become unnecessarily paranoid.
The Sociological Perspective
The critical factor to understanding sociology is how we as a species are social creatures. We cannot survive mentally without interacting with others, regardless of capacity. Kids should be free to play, learn, have fun, discover new things, and have a childhood. So, depriving kids of it because we feel they are safer this way does not help anything. We as adults go out into the real world all the time, and we are not gripped by paranoia because we had childhoods of freedom (to some extent) and gained independent skills to go out on our own.
Our generation (or our parents' generation) then turns to look at the current generation of kids and scoff and say, " Look at this degraded younger generation! Aren't we better than them? Why can't they be like us?"(Hari) and we have the gall to remove our childhood experience from the next generation all because of the violence in the real world (the media is also partially to blame in mostly showing negative stories).
Will the Opposite Be the Answer?
I am not saying to abandon the confinement entirely and let them run loose if that fear is justified. After all, our country of America has had recent public crises that give us a reason to be afraid; 9/11 and Sandy Hook come to mind. However, ruling over children's childhood is wrong, and not giving them opportunities to branch out and find new things on their own is not psychologically healthy.
Parents who protest certain kids' media that either portrays gender-neutral pronouns (Transformers Earthspark had recent controversy over this) or anything else those "lords of education" seem to think their kids should not see (this entire list of kids' shows is either out of date or wrong on multiple levels and parents just accept it at face value) makes them feel safer when the kids' shows of their generation only existed to be quirky, goofy fun and not to teach morals or realistic life lessons.
The education system is partially to blame for making academics so time-consuming that students become overwhelmed when, in reality, all the tests will not prepare them for the real world. Sure, maybe their fields of expertise, but not when…
“U.S. kids spent 7.5 hours more each week on academics than they had 20 years before”
What Does All This Mean?
I say all this to say one thing: if we continue to rob our children of the little freedoms we had when we were kids simply because we are too afraid for their safety, then we are only to make them unable to live without someone else telling them what to do. If we cannot trust them to do chores or to let them make mistakes early, they learn intrinsic skills and then socialize with their age group so they can build social skills and problem-solving. This lack of development will make them anxious, feel incompetent, and unable to cope with intense emotional reactions when out in society and lose focus on what makes their lives matter.
Hello, I am Joseph Crickmore.
But you can call me Joey. I love art and design, and anything else that can be created with my own hands. I have a younger brother who has an autistic disorder, so I always show my support on World Autism Awareness Day.
I myself am a designer, content creator, and freelance artist for commissions.
