I always want to be a good solid husband and father…well and son and brother, cousin, friend, etcetera. But husband and father are on the top of the list (aside from Christian – Jesus juked myself). However, being a good Christian I think will mean that I will be a good husband and father along with all those other things because then all of your actions would be based on wanting to do what’s best for whoever whenever.
But sometimes it’s hard to know what the best thing to do is. When it comes to guiding children through life there are so many things that they need to know by the time they leave the nest, but when is it best to share it with them? Is it different for different children? Are different parents ready to share the information at different times?
Every generation has new things in life, so how can you learn from previous generations on things like social media use or access to everything on a phone and teaching children to be able to use those devices responsibly? Do you need to teach them to use them responsibly or should you deny them those things and let them figure it out on their own as adults? We had to figure it out on our own and some people abuse it and themselves and other people are fine and behave appropriately.
I think there is absolutely no way to know for certain how to approach it because there cannot be any good date. There are currently no adults who were children when Facebook, YouTube and Instagram were so heavily used. YouTube only started in 2006, so even if a 12 year old kid was using it then, he would only be 25 years old now and is probably not mature enough for us to know how his raising actually turned out.
So, the experts who tell us what we should be doing with our children and social media, new technology, etcetera, really have no idea what the true effects of these things are on the children who will be future adults. I think we just have to go with our guts on what we feel is the best thing to do. That’s what Kayla and I do anyway. We both have gut feelings about certain things and we generally concur. Then we decide how we want to approach the situation. So far, our children seem to be adjusting well. They interact well with all sorts of children they meet…of all ages. And they speak fairly comfortably with adults that we meet.
I think we’ll continue doing what we’re doing until there appear to be red flags.
I’d love to hear what you have to say on the topic. Chime in below. And thanks for reading.