Welcome to the New World, Leave Your Values at Home: Book Excerpt #2
Tuesday, October 17th, 2017
Here is excerpt #2 from the new book we are working on, Who’s Raising Our Kids? Nurturing Human Values in a Digital World (©2017). See our post from October 1 for excerpt #1.
Excerpt #2:
My first clinical job as a therapist was working with immigrant families. These families had given everything they had for the chance to raise their kids in America; their hard work and sacrifice were inspiring. But these families were in trouble: both the structure and hierarchy of the family were being turned upside down. The teens in the family had equal if not greater power and status than their parents and grandparents. These teens had embraced the American culture that their parents had fought so hard to give them. They knew the language and understood the cultural norms of America better than their parents, elevating their status in the family and giving their opinions greater weight. This made it harder for parents to influence their behavior. These teens did not feel the need to listen and learn from the experience and wisdom of previous generations. But they were teens.
They needed a framework to help them understand, prioritize, and give meaning to all the new, fast, and exciting experiences they were having. They needed context that could root them in a value system and support them in assimilating the new, while sustaining a core identity grounded by a strong family. They needed parents who were not intimidated by this new culture, but secure in their values and aware that only with a strong sense of identity would their children fully benefit from the abundance of America.
Too often I saw parents helplessly watch as their values and traditions were diminished and their opinions dismissed. The American culture that that they sacrificed so much to provide was pushing their children farther and farther from the influence of their perspective and values.
Not all families underwent this disintegration. In the families that survived and thrived, parents held their place in the family hierarchy and maintained the power to say “no.” They structured their children’s engagement with American culture and insisted on time together as a family: when family values could be taught and sustained; when information and experiences could be brought into a meaningful context. Values, goals, and actions considered worthy of effort were both articulated and implicitly understood because parents modeled this behavior and structured how the family spent its time. Basic traditions and rituals—such as cooking and eating together, communicating respectfully to elders, and nurturing relationships with extended family—were honored. Maintaining these traditions reinforced the values that the parents held dear: loyalty, respect, integrity, gratitude, and generosity. The older generations took every opportunity to tell family stories that reinforced these values. These immigrant parents were proud that their children were becoming Americanized and, at the same time, were creating a bridge from the old to the new. With the advent of the internet, smartphones, and social media, we are all immigrant parents struggling to assimilate and thrive in a new world. Our children know more about this world than we do and they always will. The online world is changing so rapidly that we are facing a reality in which each generation of parents will have immigrant status in relation to their children. When the virtual reality revolution hits full swing, the contrast between generations will be even greater. Faced with this relentless acceleration, it has never been more important to think through our values and determine what we want our children to take with them as they navigate this new world.
Like immigrant parents, we want our children to experience the resources that the cyber world offers. We know they will need to master this environment in order to survive and thrive. We’ve worked hard to give them these opportunities. But now we need to examine our own values, evaluate how they are supported or diminished by this new world, and create structures for our children that nurture and support their well-being.
Where do we begin?
Media technology is so big and so embedded in our lives that it helps to break it down into specific, understandable parts. In my work with children and families, I have observed three distinct ways in which children engage the cyber world that have profound effects on how they think about themselves and the world they live in:
- Communication – texting and social media
- Entertainment – video games, porn, Netflix, vlogs, and gaming apps
- Information – Google™, Wikipedia®, Huffington Post, and Drudge
As parents and educators, we must look at how each of these three ways affects our children’s attitudes and behavior. Then we should ask ourselves:
- What do we want our children to understand about using the internet in each of these ways?
- What are our values when it comes to communication, entertainment, and information?
- What kind of practical conversations and ethical guidelines will bridge the gap between our values and those of the cyber world?
If we take the time to do this work and model this behavior, we can support our children’s assimilation into this new world while retaining firmly rooted values that will keep them healthy, happy, and strong.
What are the values you want your children and/or students to bring with them into this new world?
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