They say we need a village to raise a child. After becoming a parent, I understand what this truly means. When I’m overwhelmed and ask the elders in the family how they did it, they say it was never this difficult in those days. They did not deliberately do anything to raise children. Children just grew. That sounded so ridiculous!
Kids, especially babies and toddlers, need constant adult support. They need a safe environment that they can explore without hurting themselves. They need help eating, sleeping, cleaning themselves, playing, understanding the world around them, even understanding their own feelings! It’s not the work of a day or a month or even a year; it’s a good 5-6 years before kids can independently perform basic everyday tasks without constant adult supervision. So how did children from a few generations ago “just grow”?
It was because children didn’t grow up alone in one home with their parents. They grew up in the entire village. Parents had multiple adults they could trust their children with. Unlike now, when children are only with parents and one or two grandparents 24/7. Imagine the toll it takes on everyone involved, the children included. The adults get tired and irritated, which translates to little or no patience with children, because well, how can you pour from an empty cup? But what are the kids to do? Little kids can not understand their own feelings or control their own impulses. They communicate that they need help by doing things that adults call ”throwing tantrums”. And the way that an adult at the end of their patience deals with a “tantrum” is by telling the kid off. This confuses the kid even more; their mood deteriorates and they are labelled “difficult”.
There is an easy way the adults have found to get out of this vicious cycle – the mighty mobile phone. Hand the kid a mobile phone with some videos playing (all educational videos, mind you), and they will not “disturb” you. But this only has a downside. The negative effects of excessive screen time in young kids is a whole discussion that’s not for now, but let’s say there is not a single advantage that screen time can provide to young kids. It doesn’t matter what they are watching – rhymes, science shows – none of them is doing any good to kids. It’s in turn doing a lot of bad – causing speech delays, causing hyperactivity, creating irritable children – the list is long.
Parents need help. They are overwhelmed. Holding jobs, managing a home and caring for young children all at once is a herculean task. They need some downtime. They need help with house chores. They need breaks from looking after kids round the clock. They need time to nurture their relationships. We see a lot of grandparents helping out. But how much can an ageing grandparent do? It’s wrong to burden them with too much.
The solution to this is to hire house help and child care. But help isn’t cheap. It’s not financially accessible to everyone. The next big revolution has to happen in child care. We can not continue like this – in survival mode. We need good, affordable day cares and nannies; child-friendly workplaces and parent-friendly working hours; local parks with well maintained kids’ play areas; local libraries with books for kids of all ages (I can not stress this enough); parent support groups; information on different aspects of raising children (what and how to feed them, what kind of age appropriate physical and behavioural evaluations to get done, how to assess their growth and milestones, etc.) from credible sources. Parents need their village. Children need their village. Let’s give them that.