One of the most difficult duty on earth is parental duty. Everyone seems to have a lot to say about how to properly raise a child but it is never as easy as it seems. What works on a specific child might not work on another, which means parents have to consistently come up with methods to deal with specific situation as it goes, for every child is of different unique personality and qualities.
To make matters worst, as we dive into the new era, there are things that never used to matter during my own days as a child but things like that are now a thing in this present generation. Parents of those days care more about disciplinary actions to ensure that a child turn out to be the right person in the society but for privacy, I would say they know little of it or they just to pay attention to it.
Based on the perspective of parents of the olding days, privacy is earned not granted. What this means is that, as we grew older, there were things out parents used to pay attention to but slowly they start allowing us to be control of those things because they believe we have now come of age when we can handle such matters. This is how I was brought up.
Though I wouldn't say may parents really violate my privacy while growing up because I had too much time to myself, I don't know if this was done intentionally by my parents but to me it just felt like they were busy trying to make we the children have what was needed, in doing so they spend a lot of time doing business and at some point, myself, my elder brother and younger brother landed in a boarding school.
Which means we kind of just end up having the world to ourselves at a young age and by the time we were done with secondary school, we were no longer children anymore. Was sending us to boarding school a way for our parents to grant us our own privacy? I don't really know but it worked. We learn to manage ourselves properly without our parents being around, which kind of just put us in the position to tell our parents only what we want them to know and they wouldn't hover around what we aren't ready to disclose. This is the kind of parents I grew up with.
But somehow, I believe it is the situation of things that kind of just forced their hands to allow us the privilege of such privacy, if I had lived with my parents throughout my lives, they would surely feel the need to pay attention to a lot of things they were not able to because I was in a boarding school. So for other children that didn't pass through the same nurturing like I did, will surely have a different story to tell.
Despite that, I have strong feeling that allowing a child an immeasurable level of privacy wasn't in the nature of parents in the olding days or else a situation forces them to do so. In this present era, the situation has changed because the mentality of children of these days and children born in the olding days are different. Which means the way parents train a child must conform with the present times.
In this Gen Z era, allowing a child to have their own privacy is not negotiable because if as a parent you force your will on children of this era every time, they will eventually have to do one of two things, is either they find more crafty ways of keeping secrets or they rebel. So it is not a matter of what a parents wants but what is best for a child.
I'm not a parent yet but I know how difficult it must be for parents to purposely feign ignorance to somethings just because they want to make sure their child have their own privacy but despite the need to do this, it is also something parents needs to be very careful about because it must not be too much. Granting a child too much privacy can also have devastating consequences, which means granting a child the privilege of privacy have to be done in moderation.
How do you make sure it is done? Make your child earn their privacy. It is a common method used in the olding days, the more responsible a child becomes, the more the privacy they are granted and if it looks like they are backsliding in any way, such privilege should be reduced. Which means a parent must make sure they handle their children with all seriousness when they are still very little before they start coming of age when they are in need of their privacy.
By then, they would have earned it and understand what should be done and what should not. They already understand that the reason why they are granted privacy is because they have chosen to act responsibly and the moment they choose not to, such rights will be reduced. This way a child will be more aware of the consequences of their actions because there is a limit to how you can discipline a child when they are all grown up.
This write-up was inspired by weekly featured content titled Kids and privacy in hive learners community.
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