Growing Up in the Age of Distraction

Written by: Jorinde Berben
Image credit: Jorinde Berben

For those who like keeping track of this blog: the website changed to unscrewingmyself.org!

Of all the roles I play in my life (and there are quite a few), I’m always a mother first. That’s both incredibly rewarding (when I live up to my own standards) and incredibly frustrating (when I yet again have to realise those standards are not quite as realistic as I want to believe them to be).

One of the causes of my frustration is often that I compare the way my children behave with how I behaved when I was their age. I imagine that they must be getting pretty similar parenting as I had, so they should be acquiring the same manners, work attitudes and self-discipline.

Yet again this shows how imaginative I really am.

Of course, my children receive very different parenting than what I received as a child. For one, I didn’t have to grow up in two different households with parents who are both struggling to provide the care we want our children to have and still take care of our own needs. Most of the time, there is one caregiver in the house who does all the cooking, cleaning, therapy-driving, homework-assisting, shopping, laundry washing (drying, ironing, folding…), planning, emotion regulating, play-date arranging and (somehow) quality time spending with the kids. And for about 85% of the time that’s me.

That’s not quite the way I grew up, in a home with not only two loving parents but another family that lived in the same house so there were extra adults and extra kids around to help/play.

Yet, even if I factor in that aspect, it still seems that kids these days are just not as capable of planning their work and actually completing it in time as I was back in the olden days. And it’s not just my kids.

I’ll give you an example.

Last week, my daughter had to complete a scale model of a famous Roman building. She got the assignment a few weeks before, but somehow actually getting to it, proved challenging. So challenging that it was only the day before the project was due, that she, her father and I worked together on getting it finished.

She wasn’t alone, I found out later. There were quite a few other kids who had a hard time starting or sticking with the work.

‘But all those extra curricular activities these days…’ I hear you say.
My daughter has 0 extra curricular activities. None this year, because it was too overwhelming. My son goes to therapy twice a week, but has nothing else on his schedule either. One weekend out of two is spent with their father, but they have time there, too, to work on projects.

Whereas I went to music school three times a week and played badminton twice a week. And still my childhood seemed so much calmer.

What we didn’t have growing up was the ton of distractions our children are bombarded with every day, in the form of information, images, sounds, and stuff. I’ll be the first to admit that as an adult, I haven’t learned to handle these distractions any better. It’s an everyday challenge to find peace and calm, just a little ‘less’ in this world of constantly more, more and, yes, some more.

I’m not sure how to deal with this.

At times I hear myself saying: ‘I’m just going to ban all the screens from the house altogether.’
Not realistic, since half of my work takes place online and on social media.
‘Well, what about just for the children?’
Who am I kidding? My children watch screens as much for my peace of mind and general functioning as for their own entertainment. Am I really going to make it even harder on myself?
‘But maybe it won’t be? Maybe it’ll be easier after the initial shock wears off?’

I know I’d do some things differently if I were given a chance for a do-over.
Less (no) screen time, for me or my kids. Less stuff (working on that one) and more time to foster what really helps brains grow: reading, imaginative play, music, art, and nature.

In the meantime, I’m reminded time and time again that my children face challenges that I never had. That this demands a different approach, new, creative solutions, and, most of all, patience.

I’d love to hear what you think about this. How you see this developing in young people these days and what, if anything, you think we could do about it.

Feel free to share ❤

P.S. If you’ve made it this far, clearly you’ve still got a brain able to focus for longer stretches of time. Hurray for you and thanks for sticking with me.

Jorinde