Children midway between childhood and adolescence (8-12 years of age) are learning more and more to behave like adults.
Today’s children are growing up way too fast. Popularly know as “tweens” – children midway between childhood and adolescence (8-12 years of age) – they are learning more and more to behave like adults. But the tweening of these children is more than just a matter of fashion trends and the desire for sophisticate gadgets! Tweens are demonstrating almost all the behavioral traits parents would expect from teenagers.
Misleading behavior of tweens. These children’s deviant behavior is making it hard for parents to comprehend and guide them. The meltdown of family culture and the disintegration of a secure environment where children grew under the reassuring vigil of elders have left children bereft of proper guidance. There is so much of uncensored time on their hands during which they occupy themselves with magazine, the Internet and television. It is also evident that where family bonding ends, peers and media invariably creep in.
According to the Sylvia Rimm PhD, a noted child psychologist, reading materials like teen magazines adversely affect tweens. In her book Growing Up Too Fast, she talks about how these magazines influence young girls to give up dolls and lose their innocence. “Teens magazines such as Seventeen, Cosmo Girl and J-14 etc emphasize fashion, clothes, sex, make-up, celebrities, being hot and finding a boyfriend. Most of the photographs are of stars in sexy poses and the advertisement show model in flirtatious and suggesting stances. Most teen magazines perpetuate the idea that appearance, sexual allure and having a boyfriend are what’s most important for girls.”
Handling over-informed children: Recently, in a horrifying report published by a leading newspaper, 6 graders between the ages of 11 and 13 years in capital Kathmandu were caught making love in an unsupervised classroom. What do you expect parents to tell their 8-year-old kid about sex? Young children are ‘over informed’ and parents have to deal with trivia that was supposed to be the dawn of adolescence. Most tweens get their information from media, peers, magazines, and the internet, the blame being largely on ‘lack of supervision’ for unsolicited facts that could be dangerous.
Another source is their inquisitive minds. Since it is futile to sit a tween down and discuss sex, you must answer their queries with understanding and without showing that this is absurd or perverse. The next best thing a parent can do it to track down the source from where the child receives it. Unabated and strict vigil is the only visible solution at hand.
Childhood is a precious time and it is really much too short. Nicole Rocheleau, the author of the children’s book Ollie Ollie In Come Free says, “Kids are growing up too fast and are forgetting to be kids.” She believes that books that talks of positive messages will help children combat peer pressure to behave life grown-ups.
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