Parenting

Your full November 12, Response Essay This paper is a response to the article, Parenting: TheCase for Keeping Out, by Nancy Gibbs published in the Time Magazine on July 12, 2010. It is a heart touching article that revolves around the relationship between the two generations. This essay also throws light upon the fact that it is useless going an extra mile in securing the children with parental tricks, and children always tend to escape all the restrictions (thesis statement).
Nancy states that parents are extra worrisome about their kids’ hygiene, food, and security, when the kids are exposing themselves to the world. Nancy talks about different gadgets that help parents make sure that they are protecting their children from danger but since our children know about technology a lot more than parents, thus these gadgets are of no big use. Our children will always know how to escape the security fences that we will build around them. After this, Nancy states that our kids will start cheating us if we will act as if we do not trust them. Nancy ends her article ironically praising how her daughter tells everything to Facebook which she would never have told her mother.
In my opinion, parents must restrict themselves from being extra careful about their kids if they really want them to survive in this harsh world. The hard conditions and circumstances life offers later in life take its toll on those persons who have been brought up extra pampered. This is called the “ pampered child syndrome”. For example, when a child gets his parents’ attention all the time, he will grow up into a confused and dependent sort of personality when he will not find his parents’ love to the same extent due to other siblings or unfortunate circumstances.
Technology has provided a lot of security tools and gadgets to the parents which Nancy has also talked about in her article. Yet, in my opinion although children might know how to escape those, yet they are quite helpful tools in making sure that the children are safe. This is not about extra-pampering; instead, this is about taking care of your kid sensibly. Children might know how to escape all restrictions but parents must play their part. I agree that children are bigger gurus than their parents in the field of technology, and this is what has made them put trust in social networking sites more than their parents.
I remember myself calling my friends late at night because my mother did not like my using the phone. This is all a part of growing up. Our parents might have done the same sort of things in their adolescence. So, it is not an abnormal thing that kids actually do the things they are forbidden. The need of the hour is that parents build a trustworthy relationship with children so that the latter do not hide things and share their activities and problems with the parents.
In short, it is about time parents made an extra effort in building a friendly relationship with their children instead of wasting time in keeping them extra clean. Making them secure is, however, a responsibility that every parent must carry.

Works Cited
Gibbs, Nancy. Parenting: The Case for Keeping Out. The Time Magazine, 2010. Web. 12 Nov 2011. .