Do The Partners See The Opportunity To Thrive Together?

When our minds are shaped only by our unspiritual environments we tend to have a worldview that is limiting. When we open our minds to a higher consciousness, we can enter into the safety and security of a higher intelligence that guides us by our true intuition. It takes guts to make this connection, but it means ultimately knowing that the heart is what matters most. Rapid advancements in technology continually transform how we, learn, live our lives, and relate to each other. The swift and constant buzz of new and cool technical innovations has positive and negative implications on our daily lives. It also directly influences our children who are growing up, some might say, more quickly than ever. Our kids are growing up with similar but also different kinds of challenges than we or our parents had. In many ways, we cannot fully appreciate or understand the scale or severity of the issues our kids face today. For example, our favorite pastime might have been playing an Atari, or better yet, stretching the phone cord out as far as we could to go around the corner into the adjacent room, just so we could to have a private call with a friend. Kids today get bored with common celebrity. Dunking a basketball from the foul line takes extreme athleticism and is pretty cool to see once or twice. At face value, one could argue that it is useful for children to see the world for what it is.

Goodbye Is Forever

But without appropriate contextual meaning and interpretation, it is more likely that a child could, just as an adult might, misinterpret fact from fiction and truth from reality. Furthermore, it’s critical to take into consideration the cognitive and emotional implications of screen time. In four decades the economics and demographics of families and households have in shifted dramatically in the United States. Couple that with the fact that technology has infiltrated our communities, schools, and homes, presenting social and interpersonal dynamics and communications that we have yet to fully grasp or understand. Let’s face it, the days of whining about how we walked to school up hill, both ways are long over. Kids today are faced with a host of issues ranging from cyberbullying to mass desensitization of social issues, which far exceed the discomfort of a long walk home from school. The brave new world of 24/7 communications and media competes for everyone’s attention. It also has real impacts on our children and family dynamics. Studies has shown that excessive screen time can lead to significant health effects and learning disabilities including mood and personality changes, attention problems, obesity, sleep disruption, poor posture, and changes in social behaviors. Set them up for success. Create opportunities for your kids to put good practices into place on how they use mobile devices. Set them up for success with reasonable expectations, terms, incentives, and consequences.

A Good Old Brain Shake

Let them know they can be boss. Set limits on screen time. Make it fun and get personal. Tie the experience into something they can do, like writing to a friend about their experience using key facts and new knowledge. Model expected behavior. Practice your own screentime restraint by putting your phone away when your kids spend time with you. Put your phone away at least an hour before bedtime. Provide a moral compass and foundation. In that way, they are not smart, but dumb devices. The conscious side of technology comes from those that operate the device. Have frank discussion with them about what is right and wrong in digital communications. Their ability to communicate what’s right and wrong within their peer group is critical to healthy behaviors.

Wearing And Tearing

Our children’s immersion with technology is deeper and more influential than when we first played around with a calculator, digital television, or a first generation Nintendo game. Rather, we need to be giving our children time and attention, in meaningful ways, to build their character and spirit. If it matters to you, it will matter to them. We need to lead by example in all that we do. As we take the time to observe, play, and interact with our kids we can better understand how they are internalizing the world around them, and we can be there to support the healthy growth of their cognitive and emotional development. I like to think of this as creating the island. When you are on a small island, you have limited resources, either what is native to the island or what you have taken with you to the island. Occasionally some extraneous item might wash ashore that can provide a use. For the most part, you make the most of what is already on your small island for daily survival. The island is like the foundation of a partnership among two or several people. The island has some relatively fixed features such as location/geography, climate/topography, biome/ecosystem, natural resources, and risks/hazards. Does this island have the basic and core requirements for it to be occupied by partners in a mutual way from the onset? Can the partners see the potential to survive? Beyond that, do the partners see the opportunity to thrive together? If the partners choose to occupy this island together, how can they collaborate to construct a common vision of the island? In what ways do partners collaborate to toward creating a common culture and governance system for how they use natural resources? If there were to be any unintended damages, how can the partnership work to protect, enhance, and restore the island? Island relationships are one metaphor for explaining the nuances of partnerships. Like people who must live together on a small island, partnerships represent the union of two or more unsuspecting parties who come together to cocreate toward a common objective. The basic tenet of life is survival. At its most raw composition, human survival means having the necessary food, shelter, and clothing to sustain life. The world’s population now exceeds 7.6 billion people. If we view the principle of dignity from the context of our global population and our ability to provide a foundation for basic survivability, humans are drastically underperforming.