Family Matters

It was Monday morning and I had just taken my 7-year-old daughter to school. On the way back, I passed my son’s high school. As usual, the high school intersection was full of parents dropping their kids off. I turned left after a motorcycle. A parked car started making a U-turn and hit the motorcycle! The rider flew in the air over 30 meters and his motorcycle dragged on the ground after him. It looked like a scene from a stunt movie but this time it was real - no stunts, no practice - a young man was on the ground, next to the traffic light, surrounded by dozens of high school student who had crossed the street to go to school.

As parents, one of the things we always worry about is what kind of a world we will leave for our kids. No matter how many times we vote and realize we can only cast one vote in millions into the box, we somehow still feel it is our responsibility to make sure that when our kids grow up, the world will be safe, clean and pleasant for them. It’s OK, it’s natural.

… The elderly man stood next to us and gave each one of us a flyer for another party. Then, he stood in front of Eden and smiled at her. She smiled back politely. He put his hand in his pocket, took out a small ziplocked bag, gave it to Eden and went away. There were two toffee candies in the bag and a coffee shop business card. He did not give me anything or to other of the people sitting on the floor next to us.

I gave Eden a puzzled look.

“I don’t think I’m going to try this”, she said and put it in my bag. At that moment, I realised what had happened. It was a scary feeling. I sat next to my daughter, in a party in a public place and someone, right in front of my eyes, gave her drugs!

In one of my parenting workshops, I had a discussion with one of the fathers about the use of negative words and we talked about the slogan “Australia says ‘no’ to violence against children”. I explained that the brain records “Australia says to violence against children”, omits the “no” and focuses on “Australia”, “violence” and “children”. Paul thought it was a great slogan (and he did not work for the copywriting company who came up with the slogan).

At that stage, all the other participants already understood that “no smoking” only promoted smoking by focusing on the smoking, so pretty quickly, there was a lively group interaction going on.
This week, I got a video made by a great organisation, which presented the answer we were looking for in our discussion at that parenting workshop. What would you want people to focus on? We want them to focus on creating a child-friendly environment for our kids. We want them to be happy, to feel safe and to have good relationships with others.

The answer to (the pink elephant) “Australia says no to violence against children” is now “Australia says yes to a child-friendly environment for our children” and I love this new focus.

For kids to be happy, they need to have boundaries. In the fish bowl, the fish cannot swim past the glass. Tiny fish prefer small, familiar, friendly bowls because they feel safer in them. No matter how many times they bang their heads against the glass, it still makes them feel safe, because it keeps the water around them and potential threats away from them.

The Internet is a great source of information and allows us to connect easily with many people around the globe. For kids, like adults, the Internet is a fascinating world of discoveries, great exploration and yes, some danger. Like many other areas of life, in order to appreciate the “light” of the Internet, we need to have some “darkness”.

There are horrible stories of abuse and even death through misuse of connections formed on the Internet. Sneaky people exist on the Internet as much as they do in any other place society and they abuse their right to participate and become a risk to our children. Education is the answer, I say (surprise, surprise ).