Are we sending our kids mixed messages?

Of course you are ,but I bet it is a bit frustrating when you had to look a phone number up you either called the operator or looked it up in the phone book, kids today just use tech and have the number in seconds.

On the other hand we used to go outside and enjoy being with friends, today kids connect through their phones and FB.

I think most people work hard, all ages. I don’t generally talk about young people as lazy or entitled, but I hear a lot of people say those things. I see plenty of adults who are entitled and attached to their tech devices, and I always say you need to model the behavior for children, especially the parents, but all adults count. Look at the horrible ways adults are acting regarding politics. Calling people names, cutting off relationships, unable to have a civil conversation, and then we want young people to learn how to be civilized? Please, apples don’t fall far from the trees.

There is no we. Each parent sets boundaries for his or her offspring based on his own particular level of knowledge, education, and cultural understanding. This guy is great and not unknown to Ted Talks.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hER0Qp6QJNU

We now know how harmful the gadget addiction is. Parents have to be part of the solution.

I think there are some good answers here. Parenting itself is weak in this country. Our children don’t do great in school and we want to blame the schools. Our kids get involved with drugs and gangs and we want to blame society. Our kids get addicted to tech and we don’t understand how it happened. All these things have one common denominator…parents. If parents will step back from themselves a few paces and put their kids up a notch or two on the importance scale of their lives, many of these things would work out. And that means that sometimes you have to make the choices and set/enforce the rules that are not popular. We are responsible for teaching our kids how to be quality human beings.

There are a number of factors for why kids are attached to their devices now. When I was little, we’d play outside and that might mean walking a few miles to a friend’s house. Now, if a kid was walking alone on the street, the kid would get picked up by the cops and the mom would be arrested for letting her kid be unsupervised (neglect and lack of supervision).

When that started happening, in the 80’s, technology became more prevalent with cable TV, VCR’s, video games and home computers.

Where I live, even if my daughter wanted to walk to her friend’s house, she couldn’t because not only is it far, but there are narrow, country roads, where people do 60, speeding around curves, and any pedestrians would put their lives in danger. Hence, the screens and kids doing Face Time, isolated in their homes.

I do think kids are not as willing to work for money as they used to be. Kids used to work shoveling snow, or mowing lawns, or delivering papers. Now, kids that I know get money handed to them by their parents. My daughter too, so I’m not pointing fingers at others.

I’ve heard kids ask why they should learn things in school when they can just google for answers.

We enable them endlessly. We do everything for them, buy them everything, make them lazier than hell, we don’t spank them so they know no discipline, ...
Mixed messages? Hell, no…
We hand everything to them on a silver platter, so what is mixed about that??

@jca, yes, the times they are a changing. Thanks for reminding us some of the reasons we made various technology pursuits.
Maybe the reason it seems we have resented our kids for enjoying the things we have provided for them is not so much jealousy, as I thought, but lack of understanding.
Kids have reason to be fearful for their lives. At home, at school, walking to a friend’s home, shopping, everywhere is a potential danger to their safety.

I was unable to pry my daughter’s phone from her when things needed to be done, or I needed to talk to her. I’m trying to see it from the viewpoint of people born in this century. People my age look at these kids and believe they are separating themselves from personal contact. Actually, it lets them feel like they have a crowd with them, which is a comfort for those left feeling fearful all the time.
I think, looking back, Sandy Hook was a turning point for her. We adults mourned for a bright young educator who was killed protecting her students. I guess my daughter’s take was, “If teachers can be killed, what chance is there for we kids?”

Foster kids raped and killed by the people they need to keep them safe. Shooters killing people where they worship. Cops targeted for being cops.
I guess if I were fifteen, and I had a way to hold in my hand the comfort of friends any time night and day, I too might feel strongly about keeping technology close at hand.

I’m trying hard, to understand how the world looks to someone born nearly half a century after me.
Thanks all, for helping me sort things out with your various different views.
Just as we need to see things as they do regarding the safety of some technology, we also need to arm ourselves with information about the dangers of that very same technology. We need to know the pitfalls so we can impress upon them where those pitfalls exist, including how to get the exercise they tend to lack.

I am interested in knowing any other views on this.

When my boys were about 12 years old, they were HOOKED on video games. You couldn’t get them away from them for any great length of time before they would get antsy and irritable. I tried a number of things to get them into something else. Then, one day, they told me they were bored. They weren’t getting from the video games what they wanted is what it amounted to. But then they were in a quandry…the didn’t have any idea of what else they could do. They asked me what I did for fun when I was a kid. I started that discussion by telling them what we didn’t have. We didn’t have video games, computers, cell phones…TV was 3–5 channels…all the little things their generation takes for granted. I told them that I would get together with my friends and we would find stuff to do. We would ride our bikes, climb trees, hike in the woods, throw baseballs or footballs, play board games (or other games)...we just found things to do. They then asked what they could do. I told them they had bicycles…ride them. They asked where they could go. I suggested they go to their friend’s house (which was about a mile away). They were astounded! They could go there? Absolutely. I told them the rules for riding on or near the roads and how to be safe on their bicycles, and I told them to always stick with another person for safety’s sake. By the end of that summer, they were going on 10 mile bike hikes, playing basketball, looking at joining the school football team and they were real little boys again. They would still play video games, but it went from hours per day to hours per week, and then hours per month.
I think that the message the kids were getting originally was from advertisers…what games were cool and what equipment was the best. I changed that message to their own imaginations were cool and using good judgement could lead to a whole lot of fun and freedom.

Good story.
I like your approach.