Opinion

Should we give children more responsibility?

John Myhill believes we should follow biblical principles and treat our offspring more as young adults than as children.

Over at least the last hundred years, each generation of parents, teachers, politicians, professionals and sales people have, I find, increasingly refused to relate to young people over six years old as adults.
 
This goes against the entire history of humanity, which develops in the young of every species, the genetic drive to learn to behave like an adult. Those who failed to learn this quickly died in childhood.The genetic drive is still there. But our society, especially in Western Europe, seems to fight it in every way.
 
Children imitate the words and behaviour of older people with whom they interact, but their role models are frequently inarticulate - they talk to them as if they were babies, offer them games [increasingly computer games] which have little to do with adult life in the real world, place them in front of a screen, or give them choices, [from what subjects to study to what sex they want to be], for which lack of experience makes them incapable. They are rarely given responsibility for chores at home or in school, let alone given practical tasks at their parents’ place of work.
 
Their young brains are able to absorb and remember more effectively than in later years. However, instead of treating them as adults, they are fed “facts” without connecting these with the lived experience of adults; and taught sports, rather than how to drive a tractor, the basics of first aid or electric wiring: tasks which many children under ten can do with proficiency in poorer countries. Many skills of hand and eye co-ordination: from sewing and cooking to woodwork and machine maintenance are most effectively learnt at this age as, of course, are languages, playing a musical instrument and arithmetic.
 
Most of us learn by doing. Yet we give “trigger warnings” to prevent young adults from trying things for themselves: this is the state taking over the responsibility for parenting. Only when we have been doing something for some time are we able to experiment and try different methods, or learn a new skill from a computer or book. Such learning is not for everyone, and more often leads to error than to imaginative innovation. All knowledge is useful, but unless we see the relevance or it to our drive to become adults, we will forget it quickly after the exam.
 
Adult life is highly regulated - It places heavy loads of responsibility on all those who engage in work. If young people have no boundaries to their behaviour, no expectations of adult skills, chores and responsibilities, they will be unable to transition to adult life. Their genetic drive will be suppressed and mental distress/ childish behaviour will ensue.
 
Yet our current methods of infantilising young people exacerbate the problem by filling their minds with problems that adults have failed to solve themselves: climate change, war, sexuality, racism and disability. Until young people have learnt to be responsible adults, they cannot hope to develop independent ideas on such subjects. Better they should learn directly from people working in raw materials, production or transportation, than in some fashionable academic cliché.
 
All this folly has come about because most Europeans have lost faith in Biblical teaching.  "Honour thy Father and Mother".  Isaac goes with his father as a willing sacrifice to God.  David learns to defend his father's flocks as a small boy.  But many today are the Prodigal Sons, who learn the hard way because their parents fail to treat them as adults from an early age.  So many examples in Scripture: so many young people who do not even know the stories, let alone accept the faith of their ancestors, which made us leaders in the world.
 
Image by Hannes Edinger from Pixabay

John Myhill is a Norwich Quaker, retired magistrate and author, who has gone back on-line after a break of more than six years off the Internet.
 

The views carried here are those of the author, not of Network Norwich and Norfolk, and are intended to stimulate constructive debate between website users. 

We welcome your thoughts and comments, posted below, upon the ideas expressed here. 

Click here to read our forum and comment posting guidelines