Parenting is getting harder and parents today face a tough job.

Parenting is getting harder and parents today face a tough job.I suspect many suffer in silence and many lack the support that we of previous generations took for granted, like the extended family

network.

I lived in Sydney until I was aged 5 with aunties, uncles and cousins, two grandparents and one great Aunt and her family. So as well as my parents there were approximately 11 other members of my extended family in the same street!

Childcare was a family affair and if I wasn’t at my own house I was with my Nan or my Aunties (there were three of those) and you can bet that if I mispronounced a word or used improper grammar my mother, Nana or one of my aunties would have immediately said “No that’s not what you say … you say this.” So in the past parents had the whole family raising the children, not just mum and dad in the suburbs.

Today how much time do we spend at work and travelling to and from? When we are at home how much time do we spend just talking to and interacting with our children, babies and toddlers? Babies and toddlers need significant one -on one carer time to develop language skills needed to function at the required level to start school.

Today up to 25% of the children starting school from English speaking homes will have speech problems unseen in previous generations. What has happened and is still happening in society to cause these problems? And it is a problem in society as teachers do not teach children to speak, parents do that.

However, as with all problems in life the causes are multiple and come not only from within the family but also from outside the family.…Technology and how we use and misuse it.

Computers and television and mobile devices can become rampant monsters when their use is unsupervised and unlimited.

I am now hearing horror stories of preschool and primary aged children being put to sleep by a movie on their own TV/DVD player in their bedroom instead of a bedtime story. Of 15- 18year old boys not leaving their bedrooms, hardly stopping to eat or wash and staying up all night during the week and at weekends to play online computer games.

They have become out of control computer addicts, completely unable to be disciplined by their parents.

Recently in the school holidays I travelled to Sydney on the train. At Hawkesbury River station a family of four got into our carriage and sat down opposite us and promptly all pulled out their …….mobile phones to text and DS’s to play games.

For the next twenty minutes not one of them spoke to each other. Then one of the boys spotted something interesting outside of the train and tried to attract his mother’s attention.

“Mum….mum…. MUM look at the…..

“Oh for heaven’s sake Matthew can’t you be quite I’m busy! “

Parenting is getting harder, but like a lot of other things in life you only get out of it what you put in. Balance is the key.