Dear Parent,
What’s your pain point? Latchkey kids? No family dinners? More time at playschool/daycare? Some lament these issues. Others dismiss them as inevitable. Some frown at lifestyle choices of parents. And parents try to ignore critics, or justify their choices.
Like it or not, urban realities are here to stay. Long distance or broken marriages. Day boarding schools. Stressed-out parents.
It sounds depressing. As if our kids are somehow more deprived and neglected than children were 20 years ago. But this isn’t a completely accurate picture.
Iʼve lost count of the number of disapproving looks I get when people hear that my two-year-old goes to playschool. What they donʼt know is that she is the most excited child in the group of toddlers learning action songs and dance. She has been in three playschools so far, and didnʼt cry on the first day in any of them. A pleasant surprise! I donʼt quite understand how a child can happily go and play with strangers without crying for mommy. But maybe thatʼs my generation gap!
Fact is children find nothing ʻabnormalʼ about new situations they encounter. They know how to adapt far better than we did in our childhood. We may not have liked coming home to an empty house, but todayʼs kids are used to it and donʼt mind. In the end, itʼs the parental love they receive that matters. Todayʼs kids are tech-savvy, smarter and quicker to learn and understand.
More emotionally mature, they have the capacity to cope with different situations with cool. So who are we to judge them as ʻdeprivedʼ? Of course parents make mistakes, but every generation goes through that. Do we really need to feel sorry or apologetic for our different lifestyles and their upbringing? I donʼt think so. Instead, we should stand up and applaud the way they handle new situations.
