Stuart Harris is a longtime community activist on behalf of children. Following a career in international business, he has pursued his interest in children’s well-being full-time. He founded and led Valley Character, Southwest Virginia's character education coalition, and then spent two years gathering current information about character and parenting education for young people internationally, prior to his current work in creating www.pinellascircie.org. He is a former board member of Prepare Tomorrow's Parents, and currently serves as an advisor.Contact him at harrisfl@gmail.com.

• I ask you to consider this with me ---------

Humanity has learned much from research such as how to go into space ...and return… by building on generations of total human observation, research and study. If we want to build a house, we go to architects, builders, material manufacturers and others, who rely on centuries of accumulated research and experience all over the world. If we want to protect or improve our health, we go to members of the medical profession who do the same thing. This process has been followed in virtually every area of our lives.

BUT - sadly, and here I come to the core theme of my topic this morning, this procedure has generally not been followed for the most important responsibility we have. - PREPARING OUR CHILDREN FOR LIFE….

Each new parent starts virtually from scratch - other than possibly with the views, biases and experiences of his or her own individual parents and mentors.

Furthermore, every year now our world is changing more quickly from that of our forefathers – so the past isn’t necessarily always the best guide for the future. I’ll talk more about CHANGE shortly.

One solution would lie in successfully educating and motivating today’s parents --- BUT only those willing to respond voluntarily can be influenced! Moreover, this does nothing to help train parents BEFORE they have children (or even BEFORE they make that commitment!).

I believe the ONLY practical solution is to try and break the cycle and better prepare TOMORROW’S parents.

CHANGE - It’s a whole NEW world out there!

In order to consider the proposals I am going to submit, one must first recognize that many changes have taken place in recent years which have lead to an environment dramatically different from that which the human race (or at least Western civilization) has known throughout the preceding centuries and millennia of its evolution. Most of these changed exceedingly rapidly in the last century alone. Some examples are as follows:-

A. THE FAMILY

LIFE SPAN - The average life span has lengthened dramatically and continues so to do year by year. One consequence is that the concepts of one partner for life as well as the historic reality that you live just long enough to bring up your children are both rapidly becoming obsolete.

WORKING WOMEN - This is a new phenomena that really only developed significantly in the second half of the last century, since World War 2. The impact on the traditional picture of “family life” is obviously radical.

FAMILY LIFE – This has changed radically from the past in many ways. Working parents, fast foods, television and many other major changes mentioned here have taken place. Note also the increasing number of divorces as well as single parents with no marriages at all. This is not so much an issue of morality as a consequence of longer life span and other changing factors, such as the move to women in the work place, mentioned also below.

RELATIONSHIPS - With the advent of all these new communications devices and other “modern developments”, the old “family” life and neighborliness have tended to disappear and we are spending less time with family and neighbors and the art of knowing how to communicate and relate civilly is disappearing as a result. No longer do children play in the streets and neighbors talk on their stoops. Among other strong influences is that of home heating and air conditioning which leads us to shut our doors tightly to the world and move into a world of televisions, telephones and computers.

MOBILITY - The whole concept of traditional families staying together in one community is fast changing as job requirements and ease of travel etc., bring about more and more widely dispersed families who have less and less influence on each other.

NATURE’S TEACHINGS - Children used to grow up close to and observe and learn from nature – and now this rarely happens and the loss represents yet another “change” from those environmental influences upon which our society today had been built. The influence of today’s media on children, in replacement of the teachings of nature that used to be of paramount importance, is well documented in The Sibling Society by Robert Bly (author of Iron John).

PHYSICAL WELL-BEING - The total nature of the changes in our physical and spare time activities, from a life that generally meant much physical labor and limited food choices, to one of excessive, low cost, high calorie, chemically treated, fast and other foods, puts a high premium on developing guidelines and disciplines for healthy exercise regimens and nutritious diet rules

WORK - The Industrial Age, Mechanization, Robotics and Computers have all combined rapidly to change the nature of work. Man historically labored in the fields and woman in the home (without vacuum cleaners, washing machines, etc.) - and now we have booming exercise facilities and home equipment to help us try and keep in shape a body that used to exercise and refresh itself in “natural” activities!

B. COMMUNICATIONS

COMPUTERS - The development of computers as an information tool (in addition to their role in production and management decision making and control) is already having a major influence on the nature of information gathering and decision making and must mean that future generations will have an entirely different way of accessing masses of data far beyond what was available to their predecessors and way beyond the scope of conventional books and traditional sources of information. This will continue to have a greater and greater impact on such things as school and home study and personal interactions

THE MEDIA - The instant display of news on a global basis and close ups of alternative life styles on TV and through telephones and other audio-visual media brings data to all members of society (and children in particular) that has never been available hitherto. A similar impact comes from airplanes and other rapidly emerging means of widely available travel. The threat to values that bring real satisfaction continues to be increasingly heightened with the ever-increasing focus on materialism and encouragement of the desire to “have it NOW” as well as the depiction of violence, sex, etc on our children’s’ screens.

OUR FLAT EARTH
Thomas Friedman’s important new book highlights the dizzying increase in the RATE OF CHANGE. The emergence of the Internet and the physical covering of land and sea with optical cable (before the .com bust) have totally changed the dynamics of work distribution around the world through outsourcing, homesourcing and general access to and transparency of information exchange. Nothing is ever again going to be the same. But are we matching this evolution in human and societal terms?

C. "OUR CHILDREN"

"ADOLESCENCE"- The word “teenager” didn’t even appear in a dictionary until the 50’s (1950’s!) according to the late Stephen Glenn, author of a wonderful book in this field, “Raising Self-Reliant Children In A Self-Indulgent World. The trouble is that historically and physically young people have been considered “adult” and part of the work (and defense!) force, once nature has decreed that they are old enough to bear children!! (Certainly by puberty!)

What has changed?? NOT NATURE!!! So we now have hordes of young adults in our schools, ready by nature to exercise judgment and take responsibility and bear children (as they still do in other cultures), while they are “looked after” and financed to meet goals that are not necessarily of their own choosing. The gangs, drug and alcohol use and other outcomes of this lack of self esteem and self fulfillment in so many cases shouldn’t be surprising. What parent hasn’t experienced the problems of “dealing with a teenager”? Surprising? Hardly.

SCHOOLS – The concept of schools – for every child – is also a relatively new phenomenon. The concept is less than 200 years old. Originally it was overtly designed to teach basic reading skills (often to allow knowledge of and study of the bible) and basic life skills. (Was it also covertly conceived as a way of “warehousing” the increasing young population for whom the job market wasn’t large enough?)

Now it is increasingly focused on cramming as much information as possible (mostly technical) to the radical reduction (to the point of virtual elimination) of basic life skills preparation (“Home Ec”), creativity development through art and music and even core physical exercise. What more of a change could our society be facing?

NOTE: The prior two pages on the topic of CHANGE were written about 10 years ago! Who would have foreseen then that in only a short decade there would be so many NEW changes (from my perception) such as:

• The "TORRENT"of new electronic bombardment to our brains. Not only are many concerned with these "messages" and the advent of such things as internet "bullying" but it has evolved to the degree that it has now been demonstrated that children’s brains now actually receive and record information at a far faster pace than was ever the case with we who are adults today. The impact of this topic was generally recognized 10 years ago BUT not to the rate and extent that is occurring.
• There is increasing concern at the slow (if any) rate of change in our public school systems ability to recognize and react to the constantly irrelevant nature of their generally “traditional” methods of teaching and their seeming failure to develop learning environments, systems and subjects that are truly relevant to today’s world and the world in which our children are likely to be living. An excellent review of this problem and the direction of desirable solutions can be seen in the recent Mott funded "New Day for Learning" report at www.edutopia.org/new-day-for-learning
• The continuing focus on "convenience" foods, coupled with ever reducing general levels of physical exercise, is clearly resulting in greater concerns over children’s health in such areas as obesity, diabetes etc.
• Despite research that shows the value of a child having TWO caring (and presumably well-informed and prepared) parents - I suspect the facts show an increasing number of single parents - and the absence of support from extended family (in this highly mobile culture) is aggravating this situation significantly.

Preparing Tomorrow’s Parents
Three Key Questions

So - in this rapidly changing society -how should we really prepare our children to raise their children in the best way to adaptively cope with this rapidly changing society in which they will find themselves?

As time has passed, it has become more and more evident that the key to making this change is to ensure that "younger" children (pre-puberty) in particular, need to really know the answers to three crucial questions. If they do - then they might have the desire to learn more about the whole topic for themselves.

These are listed below and YOU can answer them first. The author's answers are also given below (in today's version of invisible ink!) but don’t read them until you have thought them through carefully yourself. (If you find the answers hard to read (deliberately) then all you need to will be to mark that section and then change the print color to black/automatic.)

QUESTIONS

1.How long is ones "child" a "child"? For how long does the RESPONSIBILITY of parenting last?

2.What would you like to see in your child at the end of that time?

3.What do you think will be the main challenges to be faced during the TRANSITION from birth to the end of the period you decide on in "1" above?

ANSWERS (Mine only!)

1. Somewhere between 13 and 21. In reality, in our Western civilization, this usually will be around 16/18 or when your child leaves home – for college or elsewhere.

2. Surely something like - "An individual who has acquired good values and the ability to know what will make them truly happy in life and what sort of life they want to have and has the skills to best achieve it."

3. Very hard! The challenge is to take a helpless "animal" that depends entirely on you for its safety, nurturing and general welfare - and help it become a self-sufficient adult that meets the criteria in "2" above. The process of gradually "letting go" is very challenging -but very important.

If we can somehow find out how best to instill this understanding into all our children , then hopefully they won’t rush into any risk of parenting until they are truly equipped (financially, emotionally and physically) to do justice to one of the most important and potentially rewarding task any of us can have in our lifetimes.

What we need our children to know BEFORE they commit to being parents - or take any action that could result in this – is that the responsibility of taking a tiny helpless baby that relies entirely on them for its safety, feeding and general welfare - and helping it become a healthy, satisfied and fulfilled adult and contributing member of the community, is going to depend almost entirely on the quality of the care and "training" they give that child during his or her FIRST FIVE YEARS of life. That is the time when we all learn the most - and the foundations are set for the quality of person we will become and the quality of life we will enjoy for the rest of our lives. These FIVE years are just such a small part of our likely 80 or more years on this earth, but at no other time will we have such a great amount responsibility.

Stuart I. Harris - Original 1994 - Revised July 2007

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