travel about town on their own they are often alone in the afternoon with only the computer or TV, which sucks up most of their free time. Parents try to regulate the number of hours kids watch TV and monitor films. Experts say that the rush to grow up is due to popular media - tweens magazines and TV shows. Being raised by single parents as well as watching TV can also accelerate the desire of children for being independent and creates behavior problems.
But the electronic universe is more comforting than the outside world that can be scary. Most children do not belong to any clubs and just hang about after school. They are worried about being kidnapped by strangers. Besides, friends are becoming increasingly important during these years. At school and colleges there are cliques who decide what is "cool". Many parents are afraid of their children being exposed to drugs. Kids also began cutting down their classmates as in Littleton (USA). "Wild parties with alcohol, smoking, and trying drugs are not for our children, "- parents say. Some of them think that they should act as role models and try to show the kind of behavior they want to see in their children.
As kids move to high school and then to college their life get harder not only because classes get harder and homework increases but because it is time to think of life-long goals and choose a profession.
Every society does have a serious problem. It is not the problem of the younger generation but the society itself. Some communities have such a culture that children cannot find a solace in their friend of family and their heads are being filled with violent pictures they have seen on TV. "Filtering software" is proposed to be installed to block violence that flows across the Internet. But some parents think that focus should be made on home and public organizations. They suggest developing such a curriculum both at schools and colleges that would teach youngsters ethics and construct within their minds and hearts an impenetrable shield against the influence of mass media and mean streets.
There is no way to predict how today's children will turn out. Keeping faith in kids is necessary. They are not bad. They are optimistic. They expect to have a better life than their parents and most say that they like school. Parents are their most important influences but they still need a caring adult in daily life helping them grow up to become all they can be.
b) Beating children will be a crime
The government will soon unveil legal moves to ban the use of cane or belt on children. This behavior of parents will be declared unacceptable and will be made a criminal offence in the UK. These developments were pushed by a case of a boy who was repeatedly and severely beaten by his father with a three-foot pole. The father was acquitted in the English court but such mild judgments are going to be stopped. It is decided that beating is in breach of European Convention on Human Rights that guarantees freedom torture or inhuman degrading treatment. Overwhelming majority of parents knows the difference between smacking and beating, but this has to be clarified in the law. Some parents have made a break from smacking their children. Children themselves see no distinction between smacking, hitting, slipping, and a whack. Some parents think that a reasonable punishment for children is beating them with electrical flex and high heeled shoes. Soon parents can be convicted for administering physical punishment on their children in any form.
c) High - tech and children
The fewer children play video games, or watch TV, the less aggressive they become, suggests a scientific study. The American research looked at the effects of reducing the amount of computer games played, or TV watched by third and fourth graders, who are aged approximately eight or nine.
The children assessed how violent their peers were, and it was judged that the more TV and computer games the children had seen, the more aggressive they were. This means that TV, and, more recently, games, have a direct influence on such behavior.
There are potential benefits in reducing the amount of access children have to TV or computer games. This is supported by the findings of reductions in physical and verbal aggression in children who have limited exposure to TV, video and computer games. The world becomes less scary for such children.
Watching aggressive behavior shapes the way children see the world and their behavior. They learn that angry people do aggressive things and start to imitate if the circumstances prompt similar solutions. High technology now has every opportunity to make the picture on the screen look real with the super quality image, pure sound and even close-to-the natural size.
There is a difference between watching a cartoon where th...
