Surveillance Culture
🌟Weekly Inspiration🌟
I want to raise a topic that I get asked about frequently. As parents, how much monitoring of our children should we be doing? Should we monitor their grades? Their location? Their speed on the freeway? Their texts/screen time usage/Snapchat accounts/search histories? We are living in an Information Age, with new data at our fingertips in an instant. We can essentially monitor and track most things and people in our lives in real-time. In the past, the only people that were under surveillance were people that were incarcerated or institutionalized in psychiatric facilities. Food for thought 💡.
I want you to consider these statements:
* Just because you can monitor and track, doesn’t mean you should.
* Tracking might be making you anxious.
* Constant monitoring may be making your kid anxious.
* Constant monitoring may be sending your kid the message that you don’t trust them, you don’t think they are capable, or that you expect them to never make a mistake.
* There might be something better to do with your time.
* Your relationship with your kid might improve with less access, less monitoring, and more space between each other.
* The rise in depression and anxiety in our culture, might be in part because of the complications of this tech age that we are living and raising our children in.
People feel more “connected” than ever, but lack the deeper connections they long for.
Ask Yourself:
What did freedom feel like during your childhood? Did things basically turn out ok?
Looking back, were you a kid who needed more guidance, supervision, or tracking?
What was it like to feel independent? How did it feel to problem solve for yourself when you got a flat tire, got a speeding ticket, a kid broke an arm, or the plans changed at the last minute?
What was it like for your parent to have less access to you? More space without them in your day for checking in?
What is the underlying fear about needing to track them?
If it feels necessary to track them, can you set an intention to do less over time?
Will tracking them actually make them take more academic responsibility or make better decisions?
Would it feel empowering for them to have to take responsibility for their own academic performance, driving capabilities, and communication with friends with a degree of privacy?
What would it be like for them to claim total credit for their positive achievements and their poor choices?
What might it be like for you to feel less responsible and less like they are a reflection of your worth when they do well or mess up?