Nutidens børn: opvækst i den digitale tidsalder

Today's children are living a childhood of firsts. They are the first daycare generation. The first truly multi-cultural generation, the first generation to grow up in the electronic bubble, the environment defined by computers and new forms of television. The combined force of these changes produces a seemingly unstoppable dynamic process. Childhood today is defined by the expansion of experience and the contraction of positive adult contact. Each part of this process feeds and speeds the other. The more of a manmade world that children experience, the more they assume they know, and as they become adolescents, the less they think they need adults.

Teenagers have to learn how to enjoy what they are doing, and they must learn how to give meaning to the events unfolding in their lives, by relating them to freely accepted goals. The difference between confident and productive adults and disillusioned ones is to be found in how they experience their day-to-day activities. The hidden curriculum of growing up lies in how a person learns to respond to daily situations: in mastering interactions with parents, achieving harmony with friends, learning to handle the pressures of school, and developing means to transcend everyday conflicts

The parents may have a bad influence on their kids. While parents' intentions are good, their worries about their children are eating habits and body size is misplaced and not at all helpful, Joiner said. The only time a parent should be concerned is if a young child is not eating at all or is under eating in a very noticeable way. With kids who overeat, restriction does not work. Instead, parents should offer them a variety of healthy foods to choose from and encourage exercise. On the other hand, parents may be reluctant to admit their child has a weight problem. No mother or father in this study reported that their child was fat, despite the fact that approximately 20 percent of the girls and 18 percent of boys in this sample would be classified as overweight based on the body mass index data gathered from parents' reports of their child's height and weight. This finding calls into question parents' ability to accurately describe their child's body shape and size.However, today's children have also changed. They, too, are much surer of themselves - indeed it is a compliment to parents and have the confidence of standing up for themselves, because they are more aware of their options, their capabilities and their needs. Words like gratitude and duty may be becoming defunct and slowly erasing themselves from the vocabulary of most middle-class families.Children is spoiled today, they were not that spoiled for a 50 years ago. Kids have it a lot easier today. They get everything they won’t.