As a parent or, to be more precise, as a millennial parent, you must be facing a hard time understanding your gen-z’s and the Alpha’s, don’t you? Children of the generation that are so much more exposed to digital upbringing thanks to technological advancements. That they have a different point of view for everything.
Handling children of this generation for parents of a differently grown generation is not easy. Modern parenting looks all cool and fun until chaos arises about clashing opinions. Parenting even in the modern age sounds trendy, but in fact, has a lot more effort than the previous parenting techniques.
To make this a little easier, we have listed out a few so-called rules about this style of parenting.
These are the five rules we think should be applied by you-
- Give them their Space
- Value their opinion
- Support their decisions
- Let them be financially independent
- Maintain the screen-distance
Let’s get into the details one by one.
1.Give space to your children– Now, maintaining and respecting privacy is a different story. But, giving space, their own time to think, to understand, to learn, study, play, is very important when it comes to these new-gen kids. They like having their time off from everyone, and by everyone, we mean friends too! Yes, they like having some time for themselves. They like to maintain some distance from everyone. They like having their happy place or space to get their things done. They are not very fond of always spending time with people. Constantly nagging them or asking them questions about everything will only drift them out more. From the age of 6 children start gaining a sense of what is right and what is wrong. Yes, they have to be guided at every point of their life. But overdoing it by getting in their space, will only make them grow slow as a person. So giving them the space they need and then letting them open up to work, is a process that will work amazing for both you and your child.
2.Value their opinion– Children of this generation are very much more opinionated and strong-minded due to the exposure they have received. In a way, this is a good thing. Children having their opinion makes them more confident. It builds a strong personality in them. Their opinions and their minds should be understood by you and not ignored. You should always listen to what they have to say and correct them if they’re wrong. This way, you will have open communication. At the same time, you will understand how your child’s psychology works.
3.Support their decisions– Children can’t decide about life at this small age. But they surely can decide about what they want to do in the present. Like how they want to schedule their day. When do they want to go to play or do their homework? What do they want to eat? And so many more very small decisions. About the way they want their room to be. Children start valuing your opinion and listening to you when you are more supportive of their choices. They want to decide for themselves when it comes to even the minute things.
4.Let them be Independent– Getting children prepared to become independent is something a parent must do. But the children of the new age have a knack for being independent and doing things their way without anyone’s help. This generation of upcoming kids also value financial independence and are not afraid to risk. They believe in investments and are eager to learn. They want their parents to value their independence from a very young age. To do this, you can start teaching and guiding them about financial independence as well. You can guide them about how to spend their pocket money and how to save the rest. You can encourage them when they talk to you about how they want their finances or pocket money to be organized.
5.The Screen-Distance – We all know this generation is growing in an age that is ruled by technology. It is obvious for them to get attached to this new tech and engross their minds in it. They are so much into this social media world, that keeping them social in real life has become difficult for parents. Maintaining this social distance from social media is an important rule when it comes to modern parenting. Children are often so engrossed in their digital world, that they start believing it is real. They stop differentiating between real and digital and this can cause problems.
In this modern era, parenting is a task. Even the boomers and baby boomers agree that handling kids of this generation needs a lot of effort. These simple rules, keeping in mind their psychology will help you a lot to understand your children and raise them better.
These children who are living in the digital age, are more than addicted to their mobiles and gadgets. This can be a little difficult to deal with. As parents, you can be their ‘no-screen zones’. I mean it. You can keep their mobile addictions in control.
This does not mean you keep them away from their own lifestyle of digitizing, but instead, control their time. This means you let them use the gadgets. But monitor them with the help of parental control apps. These apps help you to control and monitor your child’s browsing activities. These apps also tell you how much time they spend on the internet and what they watch. By using these apps or by or by creating no-screen zones while having food or doing screen less activities will help you keep them off their screen for a longer time.
Children of this age have limitless exposure. They have a lot more understanding of the world than you had as kids. They have no filter when it comes to speaking their mind. They are bold and brave. They want their life to be exactly like they dreamt of. And the world is a better place to live in.
They want you to be more of a friend to them, than their parents. Know them and understand them with the changing times. When you know how to balance, as they say, it’s all fun and games.