I have two girls aged 10 and 16 and some days (especially when I’m alone because my husband is away) I’m floundering. I observe my daughters’ classmates and friends and it seems to me that too many parents have made every experience accessible, allowing everything to be cleared through customs.
There are pre-adolescents who swear, who wear clothes that cover nothing. I see girls posing as clumsy twenty-year-olds and fourth graders owning one smartphoneswhile the males play at video games where death seems normal.
Then I realize that, on the threshold of 18 years oldfuture adults are increasingly found fragile and poor in self-esteemlooking for someone who approves of them in everything and, when they don’t find it, they experience enormous emotional crises.
I wonder what I can do to allow my daughters not to end up trapped in a model and lifestyle that I find truly dangerous.
ISA
Answer by Alberto Pellai
Dear Isaas you write, the context in which our children grow up today is truly complex. This is a time of educational emergency because young people are confronted with models and values that have nothing truly educational and formative, often leaving them without internal resources and confused, then causing that crisis and fragility that is pushing many very young people to have anxiety and fear regarding their future.
As you say, too many of our children are fragile because they try to gain value and self-esteem by adhering to the suggestions of influencerstrue gurus of a generation who – to use a metaphor borrowed from the history of Pinocchio – abandons Geppetto’s educational proposal, seduced and fascinated by the call of Cat and Fox. There are too many adults who see developmental age as a period to be exploited for economic purposes.
If society does not invest in adolescents, protecting them from manipulation and proposing an identity model useful to the world of the market, but not to the growth needs of minors, what follows is a great fragility. We parents must be aware of this when creating alliances between families and among educational agencies in our community.
Today we need one educational community that it acts where our children are, proposing experiences and relationships that prepare them for real life, allowing them to realize a life project oriented towards profoundly human happiness. I explain it well in my book Training for life. How to return to being authoritative parents.
(Mondadori).