Do we really have time to teach today's youth?

The other night, I couldn't fall asleep! For some reason my mind ended up drifting to the days of my youth. I am not sure whether my nostalgia emanated from the fact that I had just spent an hour talking to my younger sister in Canada, or the fact that earlier that afternoon I had observed my daughter playing with her new friend who lives across the street. Whatever the reason, the fact is it drifted to a time when my sisters and our friends spent endless hours together. Times were so much more different to that which my children experience today. We seemed to have had lots more freedom to do things,to explore and become ourselves. Once housework and school work was done, we played many, many games....marble hole, hopscotch, rounders or hand-games. Ludo, snakes and ladders and monopoly were our board-games. I particularly liked to read and would sometimes disappear into my own world of Enid Blyton, or Mandy, Bunty or Tammy comic books...these were weekly comic books which came from England and was sold at the local bookstore. Eventually, I would steal one of my mom's Mills and Boon novels and curl up under her huge mahogany bed and devour it up...there was no turning back after that first time...I grew to have a passionate love for romance novels and later movies. We had no television. I think I remember when one of our friends down the street got the first one and we would crowd by their front door and peep into the house to view the scratchy black and white screen. Or sometimes we would go by our great-uncle and his wife, a Grenadian, on a Sunday afternoon and look at a movie with our other cousins after having our share of the delicious ice-cream she made. We loved the radio and enjoyed the children's programs and our goal was to get on the show at least once. We created our own talent shows in the yard. The boys would make complete drum sets and other band instruments out of milk tins and other pots and pans. I remember belting out Bob Marley's "No woman no cry" like a real movie star one Sunday afternoon. I loved summer holidays with almost daily sojourns to the sea or the river or both....As I think about it I realize how we really had no major needs. We were happy to receive a book, doll, or marbles, or a game at Christmas time. A nice card, along with our mothers baking a nice birthday cake was quite a treat. I use to be really happy when my mom allowed me to spend a Sunday at my best friend's house....These were wonderfully idyllic times which as I reflect on them makes me realize how privileged I was.

Life has changed so much since then. Today, I am a parent and though I am aware that children will always find their own way in which to have fun, grow and get to know who they are in this world, I realize that the differences in the time in which we live makes it so much more difficult for many to succeed in a way so many of us were able too from a previous era. Firstly, they don't have the same uninhibited freedoms that we enjoyed. Today's parents are a very worried bunch. Most of us wont allow our children to disappear from our eye-sights...we feel that once they are home they are safe. If we can't reach them on the phone we have immediate cardiac arrests. Our responsibilities are greater that our parents were, so we are more stressed. Even when we think we are having fun, our minds are still trying to solve some problem somewhere in our lives. Our children's needs and wants are greater.....they are not easily satisfied. They are also more likely to be at home, in their rooms, alone in their own worlds or a virtual world. Spending time on neighborhood streets is a almost unheard off....with all the new projects being created, do we see children playing in playgrounds or on their neighbourhood streets? Their connection to each other has become virtual....and in the virtual world do we realize how they let down their inhibitions and allow themselves to do things which would make us cringe. How many young people can actually plan their own little hike to the sea or search for mountain streams without adult supervision and be trusted to do the right thing. What games do our children when they are off the school yard. Have we taken the time to teach them any we remember? Are we encouraging them to get away from the tv, the pc or the bb long enough to connect on a human level with friends and family. Do we really care if they do?

I have listened to, and read other peoples views of what can be done to change things but I honestly think that at the root of it all is that there is a lack of available time and patience on the part of today's adult....yesterday's youth....'We' of a different generation! We don't have the time to really do what would be needed to make a difference, to put out the effort to mold and teach the children and the youth a different way, a new way! If, we look at ourselves honestly we don't have the time....we are busy working, and when we are not working we want to relax, have a drink at a bar, go to a party, go to the gym, to church, a meeting, a festival or watch a favorite show on tv....we earned it....We want to be on the internet connecting with our friends from yesteryear too.....we have to cook and clean and do a number of other things that keeps us from looking and seeing and teaching the youth but yes, we have time to criticize and talk and we know all that needs to be done but the reality is that for almost all of us we really don't have the time to do what really needs to be done.

I grew up in a simpler time and I suddenly miss it!