Selflessness and empathy are two of the most important ingredients for children to develop healthy relationships. Selflessness involves the capacity for children to place the concerns of others appropriately ahead of their own. It allows others to sense that, whatever children do, their interests will be considered. Empathy is the ability for children to understand [...]
Popular culture and technology are redefining the meaning of relationships; what relationships are, how they develop and are maintained, and how many relationships we can have. Popular culture, for example, suggests that love can be found in a few weeks on shows like The Bachelor, real family’s lives mirror shows such as Kate Plus 8 [...]
Values are a pretty darned touchy subject to bring up these days when it comes to raising children. Values have gotten a bad rap because of how they are discussed in politics and as they relate to religious beliefs. When most people hear the term values used, they often think of the hot-button value issues [...]
I just wanted to share a very kind review of my latest parenting book, Raising Generation Tech: Preparing Your Children for a Media-fueled World, by Dr. Marilyn Price-Mitchell.
How powerful and toxic are the value messages that children are receiving from the media today? According to a large body of research, the answer is very potent and pervasive. Though I’m obviously making a judgment on what good and bad values are, I don’t think many parents would disagree with the values that I believe aren’t healthy for children. The research demonstrates that the values I’m going to describe actually hurt your children. Though there are many destructive values that you want to protect your children from adopting, I’m going to focus on the three that I believe are most influenced by the popular media, most harmful to children’s development, and that have research to support my stance. But don’t let my short list prevent you from identifying the unhealthy values that you see hurting your children and from taking steps to prevent your children from being exposed to those values.
Self-identity is one of the trickier contributors to children’s healthy development because you can’t “do” things to your children to give them their self-identity. Rather, you can only create an environment that allows their self-identity to evolve naturally. A part of the environment that supports the emergence of culture and media, that aim to stunt, [...]
The externalization of children’s self-identities caused by the omnipresence of popular culture and social media today, that I discussed in my last post, has resulted in an unhealthy internal focus on the self among young people these days. Do you recall the story of Narcissus? The handsome fellow in Greek mythology who, because of his [...]
“To all of Chris' friends: This is his father. My son carelessly left his account logged in so I decided to snoop around. Upon reading my son's personal information, I would like to clear a few things up. My son is not a ‘gangsta,’ he will not ‘beat a ho’s ass’ and he will most [...]
Whenever I think popular culture, and the companies that control it for their own profiteering ends, has gone as low as it can go in its wanton disregard for basic decency in general and children in particular, it always seems to find a way to dig deeper within itself and discover new depths to plumb. [...]