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We always thought that technology would make our lives simpler and free up more time. However, as technology has advanced and simplified our work tasks, our workload has seemed to just increase overall. We may not be sitting down at the table all day submerged in paperwork, but we are still sitting down in front of a computer screen all day. It’s a different kind of busy, but its busy nonetheless. The sad part of the story is that our children are bearing the brunt of it all… far more than we could know.
It takes only a casual look at the animal kingdom to understand that one of the most basic principles of parenting is availing our presence. Can you imagine a lion cub away from its pride? Granted, lions and sheep do not have to worry about bills, or the future of the world, technological advancement and evolution, but they still have one over us in the fact that they are raising their young exactly how they are supposed to.
We cannot take away the essential component of parents availability from the mix of proper child development. The reasons for this are found in a plethora of studies—I will share only a few in this article.
New research on infant mental development and health has revealed that infants require permanence in their relationships and an order to their routines if they are to develop properly. Emotional stability for these little ones, are tied to the consistency that they experience in their relationships and experiences earlier in life. Infants are seeking attachment and they begin to form close bonds with the people that they consistently interact with; a primary or small number of stable, responsive caregivers. This is what the family is supposed to be to these children at this stage.
These discoveries were found to be of high relevance in a study by Dicker and Gordonon “Ensuring the Healthy Development of Infants in Foster Care: A Guide for Judges, Advocates and Child Welfare”.
They found that this attachment disruption in the early life of a child was largely responsible in many instances where foster children showed signs of low emotional development or even low mental development.
While this research teaches a whole lot of things, it also raises a very fundamental question in my heart that I have had to battle myself; “Are we raising foster kids in our own homes?” I do not mean to suggest that foster kids are of any less value than kids with parents, but the research is clear on the dangers they are exposed to and it scares me to think that we may be exposing our own kids to similar dangers by being absent.
A kid’s primary attachment should be with their biological parents, that is the best option and the next best thing will be a particular person or group of people other than their parents that remain a permanent fixture throughout their formative years. This is hard to come by in the now bustling “Childcare industry”… It’s all business now.
The statistics are alarming on the large number of parents that stay away from their kids throughout work seasons and for large chunks of time and then immediately want to get away from their kids again for the holidays and have some ‘me time’. Statistics from the Family and Childcare Trust(UK), show that working parents in the UK paid a total of £2.75 billion (the equivalent of £732 per child) for childcare in the summer of 2017. The statistics in the United States is not any less forgiving; The average cost of day care in the U.S.(as at 2016) — $9,589 per year — edges out the average cost of in-state college tuition at $9,410.
In infancy, any change in routine and in stable relationships can lead to food rejection, digestive upsets, sleeping difficulties, and unease. Profoundly, research has shown that these reactions occur even if the infant’s care is being shared between only two people; Mother and babysitter. These reactions triple in regularity and seriousness if the child has to be passed around, from mother to babysitter, to day-care centre.
For toddlers, attachment disruptions can also have clear effects. Their emotional development is affected. The constant and uninterrupted presence and attention of a familiar adult preferably a parent will go a long way to reverse or avoid these tendencies. However, in the absence of this necessity, the long-term effects are drastic. The children are hampered in the quality of their next attachments, which will be less trustful.
The more these disruption happen, whether in the guise of continually changing babysitters and handlers or replacing parental care with institutional based daycare, the more difficult it becomes for that child to cope relationally in society. They tend to grow up as persons who lack warmth in their contacts with fellow beings.
What I consider to be the saddest part of this discovery for me is that by our own absence, we are actually most likely replacing ourselves. Kids develop psychological parents quite apart from their actual and biological parents. Hence, we have scores of cases where the child grows up with tremendous respect for an employed caregiver than for their own parents. We just may lose influence over our kids and over the decisions they choose to make in the long run.
I know an older and very successful businessman who kept complaining to me that his sons looked nothing like him! He kept going on about how they didn’t inherit a strand of his DNA; his grit, hard work, and edge in life. I listened to him and secretly made a vow not to ever make the same confession when my kids are all grown up. The Sperm may pass on DNA, but it never teaches anyone to be a man, we have to be present to do that ourselves!
I know that work is important, the economy makes it all the more so, but I pray we never fall into the category of people that kid themselves into thinking that they are working their asses off for the kids, when they don’t spend enough time with the kids to prepare them to take advantage of all the opportunities that the world offers… including the benefits our years of work offers them.
No matter, how busy you are… Make time for your kids. If you aren’t ready to do that, my candid suggestion is that you do not bring any into the world.
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Photo: Unsplash