Times change, and so do the circumstances in which children are raised. Just because something was good for our great-grandmothers, grandmothers, parents or for us doesn’t make it per se good for our children too.
People evolve, science evolves, circumstances change. If it were the other way round, there would never have been any progress at all. Imagine Tesla dropping his research, because why would we need alternating current if he grew up without it? Ridiculous, right?!
I’m not saying that everything new is automatically good. But not everything old is good either, just because it’s the only thing we know.
First of all, “that’s how we were raised and we turned out fine” really isn’t a sustainable argument. In fact, it isn’t an argument at all.
People seem to think this sentence fits any situation: when they don’t know what else to say, when they simply want to play the know-it-all, or even with the best of intentions. Whatever the intention, it’s not okay.
Let me give you a few examples to back up my point, although the list could go on forever.
Children’s Eternal Enemy: the Internet
As a media scholar, I have to bore you with media once again. Which is exactly why I feel entitled to build my main argument around them. So: when we talk about media consumption back in our day and today, there is a huge difference, above all in technological development.
Our grandparents grew up without TV. Some had a radio, some didn’t even have that. Did that mean our parents should also grow up without TV, even though by the time they were children it had become part of every home and every family’s daily life? We grew up without the internet (at least in early childhood). You could say we grew up together with the internet and developed alongside it.
We know what a dial-up connection is, we know what slow internet means and what a mobile phone without internet means. Our children won’t know any of that. And that’s okay. They have their thing, we had ours. Although, what I would have given as a little girl to choose which cartoon to watch and when…
Can a Child Learn to Walk Without a Baby Walker?
When I was growing up, and the same goes for my husband and my sister, the baby walker was simply taken for granted: children used one to learn to walk “faster”. I never even crawled. I went straight from the walker to walking.
When Sofia was big enough to get a walker of her own, we happened to be at our paediatrician’s and she gave us a leaflet that said in red letters that a child must UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES use a baby walker. And it came with a detailed explanation:
- a baby walker is not a natural way for a child to learn to walk: when they are ready, they will first pull themselves up onto their little legs, then walk from one piece of furniture to the next, and finally, once they feel steady enough and their legs are strong and firm enough, they will let go and walk on their own;
- a baby walker causes instability and poor development, above all of the hips, and because the child pushes off in an unnatural way to move both itself and the walker, it can also lead to poor development of the feet;
- if the baby, God forbid, tips over together with the walker, it can be seriously injured…
Those arguments were enough for us not to buy Sofia a walker at all. We let her learn to walk on her own, at her own pace, and that’s exactly what she did.
So, just because we grew up in baby walkers doesn’t mean Sofia has to.
Who knows, maybe that very walker is the reason I still don’t walk properly and, still in my twenties, have unbelievable pain in my back and knees… Maybe not, maybe yes, I wouldn’t dare claim either, I’m not an expert. But Sofia’s paediatrician is, and her arguments were stronger than that old cliché “back in our day”.
Times change.
Times Change, and That’s a Good Thing
The same goes for children’s food, sweets and a thousand other things that are different in raising children today compared to when we were growing up.
Everyone has the right to raise their child the way that works for them. Whether that means “traditionally” or the “modern” way is every parent’s choice. And that is the only fair thing.
Just please, spare us the “oh, suuure, you’ve reinvented the wheel and now you do it your way, but how did you grow up without it, or on it (when it comes to food)”.
That is not an argument, I repeat. It’s the opposite: the lack of one.
After all, we should be glad that science keeps moving forward and that “some learned people out there” are trying to make our everyday lives easier and better, instead of needlessly wasting energy and nerves on stubbornly going back to the past just “because that’s how we did it”.
S-Mama
Leave A Comment