Is anyone else experiencing the full understanding of that Legião Urbana song? …
(…You say your parents don't understand you/ But you don't understand your parents/ You blame your parents for everything/ This is absurd/ They're kids like you/ What will you be when you grow up?…)
I remember my dad coming home furious, huffing and throwing his heavy hand on the red phone and pulling it out of my ear, saying, “I've been trying to call this house for over half an hour, and the line is just busy, which you talk so much on this phone, are you selling a farm by any chance?!”
So, when I get home and see my 12-year-old firstborn lying inert on the couch and completely mesmerized by the blue screen of his cell phone, I say: “You can't stay there all this time, you're looking like a gecko you're so white, go take a sun, play ball, ride a bike or are you buying stocks on the stock exchange? Oh, I'll tell your father everything, and he'll take your cell phone. My son, without taking his eyes off the device, retorts the old and well-known phrase: “Mom, how boring you are!”
Often amended to this scene, the youngest son appears out of nowhere behind me and adds: “I'm the only one who still doesn't have a cell phone at my school, everyone does. You really are a pain in the ass!”
On automatic command, it rises from the depths of my core: “You are 'O' my son! And you're not EVERYBODY!"
On the day we went to go through Mom's closet, shortly after her death, my sister found a letter I wrote to my mother when I was about 15 years old. Of course I didn't remember anymore, but Mom kept it, and when I read it, a compartment of my memory came back, and I realized that I'm currently just dealing with myself, in a male version of the XNUMXst century. In an excerpt from the letter I wrote: “we need parents who at least understand their children, in today's world everything is different from past decades”. I was claiming new jeans and also the right to leave and return later than the stipulated time. I made a drama out of my opinion, claiming that she always imposed her norms and conditions and that she never let me speak, and that maybe I wasn't the daughter she wanted to have, that if I could I would choose another mother, and I wanted her to be more my friend. The moment I read the letter, I cried and laughed at the same time, I also felt ashamed, I felt a little ridiculous.
It's good that Mom kept this timely letter, so that I could reflect that a mother is a mother, and not a friend of her children. And also to calm my heart, which is sometimes afflicted, if she had the patience and wisdom to make her daughter become a person in life, I would also be able to...
Realize that the frictions because of the phones continue, only the colors, formats, size, mobility and so on have changed.
But both serve so that young people can communicate and currently socialize through social networks with their real or virtual friends. But with one striking difference, in my day, the most we did was prank the police. Today our children are exposed to a dangerous network of information, and they are often not prepared to absorb and filter what they see and hear there, besides, crazy things happen in the world.
When I went to a party, Mom would warn: “Watch out! Don't drink anything you're offered and be smart with your glass. Although I was never a drinking person, I was smart with my glass. And apparently not much has changed in the meantime, because I recently went to a party and the girls were holding this kind of cute cups, even unicorns or something, that had a straw and were capped. As soon as I saw that, I remembered Mom, and I thought: "How smart are the girls today..."
Grandma would exclaim with an air of superiority: “I raised 12 children, and you can't handle raising two!?”
Ah, I wanted to see grandma raising her 12 these days, she would be freaked out, or not… because just one look from her at her bearded big guys, for them to lower their heads and not hear 'a peep'. I envied that authority.
When I go back to my childhood, I don't remember anyone asking what I wanted to eat. You simply made what was available in the kitchen, and then served it to us on the plate. As we were always hungry, we ate, regardless of whether it was very tasty or not very tasty, that wasn't even the most important part, and yes, it was all very nutritious, I remember that. And I also remember, on weekends, a saucer with delicious squares of milk sweets that arrived right after the serving dishes were very clean.
My father bought what he liked, not what we kids wanted, except that at times he would make a delicious and succulent filet parmigiana and fry a bowl of French fries. With that, we learned to eat what was served to us and still be grateful for the meal.
No mimimi. It went something like this: “Oh, don't you want to eat? All good! Stay hungry.”
Modern times today, in which the family planetary position has changed order, before fathers/mothers/grandparents were the 'Sun', now they are the children. We are giving everything ready, and still serving on the tray, we are sometimes orbiting around their wants, not knowing for sure to distinguish from the true needs and letting them think they own the piece.
With that, they can't stand frustrations, they don't know how to wait and for whatever silly reason their little world collapses.
We parents often take away the authority of teachers and then charge and think it's up to them to educate, but I think the teacher's task is just to instruct them with general knowledge, who actually educates and sets limits are us parents. The life of teachers is not easy, as if this distortion of values ​​were not enough, there is still the digital age that is ending, or rather, the calligraphy notebooks have already ended.
My youngest son is 7 years old, and other children of his age that I know suffer from a comfortable syndrome that is called: 'lettuce hand'.
It was enough to write a little more than half a page for your little hand to start to ache and lose its tone, becoming as weak as a lettuce leaf. She reads a text quickly with her eyes, but has trouble understanding what has been read. I think this is all the fault of that girl who answers the call 'OK, Google', which appears in fractions of a millisecond with the search done and the answer ready.
Sometimes I feel like I lived my childhood in the Jurassic era. The novelties do not only happen in the heaps of changes, but in the 'rapid' speed (as my little one says) that they emerged. My generation had to search the Barsa encyclopedia in its 19 volumes, look for the researched content, read, summarize on the foolscap sheet, front and back, with impeccable handwriting, if they didn't want to do it again. I remember my hand hurting, a lot, but how important was that. It was to be done and done. When the work was in a group, we would meet at a classmate's house, this colleague's mother would make a carrot cake for the afternoon snack, while we shared the research. Each member of the group copied it in cursive (readable, because the teacher didn't even read it), then we put the parts together and the work was characterized like a Frankenstein. But all this tactic was just to get it done right away, so we could play around a little later.
Now they do everything through Skype, I don't know how it goes...
The current generation has more elaborate, faster minds, which quickly capture simultaneous and distinct information, their fingers frantically type only the pieces of words, where their messages look more like a CIA code., but unfortunately they can't stop to analyze the facts. , interpret texts, or rather, are lazy. And so, they don't develop a critical sense, they are led to do what everyone else does, like 'Maria goes with the others', and this is bad for the good formation of a thinking human being.
The way of educating in order to instruct has to evolve according to the more complex software models that we are putting in the world. So, notebooks are becoming obsolete, but the same cannot happen with basic values, with authority, respect inside and outside the home, in schools and/or in society. I, who have 2 children and work with children daily, train my observance to sharpen my perception with them.
I came to the conclusion that all children, regardless of their social class, religion, color, ethnicity, gender and the like, need very simple things so that the 'base' formed in early childhood is healthy and happy, namely: Breast milk, sun, sand or square, some fruits (and other nutritious foods), friends and especially their parents available and within reach.
I came to this conclusion from listening to stories like this one from a 9-year-old boy.
Then I had to explain to him how bad it was for his physical and mental health to spend so much time on the video game or cell phone, eating only stuffed cookies. I heard the following: “Aunt Lilian, I think my mother doesn't love me, she lets me eat what I want, when I want and she doesn't care if I play too long”.
It is clearly a request for limits, which was understood as the absence of attention and love, because “those who love, care!”
Well, finally, let's go back to the lyrics of the song and understand that we are learning to be parents as our children learn to be children. That many times the mistakes made with them are of origin of our ignorance (absence of knowledge) and not of malice. But we need to reassess our system as soon as possible, and how to deal with this new era. Our actions are generating instantaneous reactions not only in our own, but in society and consequently in the planet, since now everything is globalized.
Hey, guys! We're the ones in charge now!
If your child has already been born. So, now you're not just a son anymore, assume your new post!
Oh, and if I had known how difficult this maternal task of 'sending' was, I wouldn't have been in a hurry to grow up, and I would certainly have enjoyed a thousand times my filial condition of just 'obeying', at that time I didn't know anything, so innocent…
As my preteen son would say; - "Now it's gone, old man".
You may also like another article by this author. Access: Beyond us
