I think there is more to it than teaching and environment. Their innate constitutional type also plays a role.
For example with my two sons, one has no tv in his house, he says he has better things to do.
The other has a movie room with a giant screen for TV/movies, and bose speakers for surround sound.
Same upbringing, and both home schooled, different outcomes, due to ICT effect.
We can do our best - pity parenting is not taught in school, we get to dive in the deep end and must swim.
Namaste,
Irene
--
Irene de Villiers, B.Sc AASCA MCSSA D.I.Hom/D.Vet.Hom.
P.O. Box 4703 Spokane WA 99220.
www.angelfire.com/fl/furryboots/clickhere.html (Veterinary Homeopath.)
"Man who say it cannot be done should not interrupt one doing it."
Video games
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Ellen Madono
- Posts: 2012
- Joined: Fri Aug 15, 2003 10:00 pm
Re: Video games
I envy you all who raised your kids out of the reach of technology.
My kids were raised in the inner city of Pittsburgh. That means they went to school with all classes except the highest. I tried hard to keep the TV and trash food out of reach. But that meant they resented me. They were not home schooled for the most part. Instead, they learned to play the violin and on Sundays they went to Japanese school with Japanese kids. We didn't go to church. I guess you could say they were Asian-American.
When the teenage years happened, all hell broke out. First of all, I didn't know anything about the drug culture. I had never been integrated into my American peer group, so I was quite ignorant about what they were up against. Later I taught in those same public schools and learned more about my ignorance. Also, we lived in the center of the Jewish community and they obviously were not going to be invited to Bar Mitzvas.
The child who went crazy with marijuana became of pro critic of the media. I don't quite understand what she is thinking now, but she is in the center of her peers. Those peers are now adults, and surprisingly, they are no longer crazy. She also has fully witnessed the suffering that arises from her culture. She is now most concerned with the ocean. Playing there and somewhere out of the side of her eye, she sees what is happening to her beloved ocean environment. Because she is so much a part of her own small part of the larger mainstream culture and at the same time critical, somewhere, sometime she will find a way to make an impact. Unlike me, she knows her peer culture.
My youngest was telling me how he and his college friends gathered together to play each other on their laptops. He showed me the games. The games are not only violent, they seem to be a test of fast reflex reactions. Competition with his peers seems socially important. He is now in graduate school again with engineers, so my guess is that the emotional/social age develops slowly for them. But, it is happening.
The oldest is harder to describe, but similar. Each has found a niche among their peers. They are surprisingly critical of their own peer culture and the cultivation of compassion for themselves and others seems to be a primary theme. Compassion does not come easily when you have been raised with so much competition and innuendos of violence. So, they are groping.
I trust my children and their basic instincts despite the fact that they were not raised in utopia. Despite the depth of my ignorance of American culture, I trust my instincts as the mother of human children.
Last night I had a revealing dream. One daughter was crying, as an 8 year old. She had skinned her knee. I thought Calendula, but in the dream I managed to reach out and cuddle her saying, "it must have hurt when you fell down." I wasn't the cuddly kind of mom, but maybe I am changing.
Ellen Madono
My kids were raised in the inner city of Pittsburgh. That means they went to school with all classes except the highest. I tried hard to keep the TV and trash food out of reach. But that meant they resented me. They were not home schooled for the most part. Instead, they learned to play the violin and on Sundays they went to Japanese school with Japanese kids. We didn't go to church. I guess you could say they were Asian-American.
When the teenage years happened, all hell broke out. First of all, I didn't know anything about the drug culture. I had never been integrated into my American peer group, so I was quite ignorant about what they were up against. Later I taught in those same public schools and learned more about my ignorance. Also, we lived in the center of the Jewish community and they obviously were not going to be invited to Bar Mitzvas.
The child who went crazy with marijuana became of pro critic of the media. I don't quite understand what she is thinking now, but she is in the center of her peers. Those peers are now adults, and surprisingly, they are no longer crazy. She also has fully witnessed the suffering that arises from her culture. She is now most concerned with the ocean. Playing there and somewhere out of the side of her eye, she sees what is happening to her beloved ocean environment. Because she is so much a part of her own small part of the larger mainstream culture and at the same time critical, somewhere, sometime she will find a way to make an impact. Unlike me, she knows her peer culture.
My youngest was telling me how he and his college friends gathered together to play each other on their laptops. He showed me the games. The games are not only violent, they seem to be a test of fast reflex reactions. Competition with his peers seems socially important. He is now in graduate school again with engineers, so my guess is that the emotional/social age develops slowly for them. But, it is happening.
The oldest is harder to describe, but similar. Each has found a niche among their peers. They are surprisingly critical of their own peer culture and the cultivation of compassion for themselves and others seems to be a primary theme. Compassion does not come easily when you have been raised with so much competition and innuendos of violence. So, they are groping.
I trust my children and their basic instincts despite the fact that they were not raised in utopia. Despite the depth of my ignorance of American culture, I trust my instincts as the mother of human children.
Last night I had a revealing dream. One daughter was crying, as an 8 year old. She had skinned her knee. I thought Calendula, but in the dream I managed to reach out and cuddle her saying, "it must have hurt when you fell down." I wasn't the cuddly kind of mom, but maybe I am changing.
Ellen Madono
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Tanya Marquette
- Posts: 5602
- Joined: Tue Oct 30, 2001 11:00 pm
Re: Video games
Ellen
We had no TV but the first song my son sang was a commercial. He was about 3 or 4 yrs old. Now where did he get that from?
The point is that the culture outside is incredibly invasive and in very subtle ways. You drive to the store and it is there. Radios
are playing, the kids are observing what others are doing and what the sounds of the culture are about.
When my kids were mainstreamed they were enamored by that culture and wanted to fit in. Who can blame them for wanting
to have friends. But with that comes the counter influences and judgements. Both my kids suffered by feeling different.
My daughter embraced her differences—but not until she was well into her 20’s and began to find people with similar
experiences and backgrounds; i.e. being different. My son never felt at home in himself and it still shows. Both my children
are adults and have learned survival skills. My daughter moved academically, now getting her second masters degree in
social work. My son rejected school despite his incredible intelligence. He became a chef and left to move into the
energy trades, doing what I did. He is an unfulfilled person because he let others define who he should be.
So you can control outside media and social influences only so far. I think we just hope that the core values we try to teach
take root and find expression in their lives as humans in a social world.
t
We had no TV but the first song my son sang was a commercial. He was about 3 or 4 yrs old. Now where did he get that from?
The point is that the culture outside is incredibly invasive and in very subtle ways. You drive to the store and it is there. Radios
are playing, the kids are observing what others are doing and what the sounds of the culture are about.
When my kids were mainstreamed they were enamored by that culture and wanted to fit in. Who can blame them for wanting
to have friends. But with that comes the counter influences and judgements. Both my kids suffered by feeling different.
My daughter embraced her differences—but not until she was well into her 20’s and began to find people with similar
experiences and backgrounds; i.e. being different. My son never felt at home in himself and it still shows. Both my children
are adults and have learned survival skills. My daughter moved academically, now getting her second masters degree in
social work. My son rejected school despite his incredible intelligence. He became a chef and left to move into the
energy trades, doing what I did. He is an unfulfilled person because he let others define who he should be.
So you can control outside media and social influences only so far. I think we just hope that the core values we try to teach
take root and find expression in their lives as humans in a social world.
t
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Ellen Madono
- Posts: 2012
- Joined: Fri Aug 15, 2003 10:00 pm
Re: Video games
Yes, I agree Tanya. I is important not to judge our kids to quickly. Each has to make their own mistakes. It is like illness. If we don't have our little suffering (in the best of all worlds), we don't learn in most cases. Also, I notice that my boy takes turns that are quite unexpected for me. Being fully there to embrace his way of life is a gift to me.
I was thinking about patients who left me (failure ha ha). I am sad because I could have done more for them, but each has to make his own choices. Staying neutral and not judging them or myself is essential to the "cure." The same for our kids. We gave them all that we could with our limited insight. Now that they are adults, I can look out and watch them struggle. It is not up to me to swim for them. Or to judge their style of swimming.
BTW, I am watching the little posts that you make on Facebook and enjoying them. I think it is you.
Ellen Madono
I was thinking about patients who left me (failure ha ha). I am sad because I could have done more for them, but each has to make his own choices. Staying neutral and not judging them or myself is essential to the "cure." The same for our kids. We gave them all that we could with our limited insight. Now that they are adults, I can look out and watch them struggle. It is not up to me to swim for them. Or to judge their style of swimming.
BTW, I am watching the little posts that you make on Facebook and enjoying them. I think it is you.
Ellen Madono