Children Need a Stable Happy Home
Wednesday, March 4th, 2009 Subscribe To Our Feed
A new report that has taken over 2 years to compile presents some stark findings derived from interviews with over 30,000 children. The report, commissioned by the the Children’s Society, presents around 30 recommendations aimed at parents, teachers, government the media and society as a whole regarding what needs to be done to improve the childhood experience of most children.
The reason that children’s lives have become increasingly difficult has been found to be excessive individualism. Leading experts have concluded that excessive individualism has meant that people are more pressurised to compete, more pressurised to own things and less inclined toward helping others.
Around 70% of the children interviewed said that parents getting on with each other is one of the most important factors in raising happy children. Children from broken families are 50% more likely to experience low academic achievement, low self esteem and suffer from depression or anxiety.
The increased exposure to television and the media that most children experience is promoting materialistic desires and breeding generations of consumers. And these consumers want to consume unhealthy fast-food and more television and media.
The United Kingdom and the U.S. are the worst advanced countries for well being amongst children. In Sweden 8% of children live at or below 60% of median income whereas in Britain the number is 22%.
The report goes on to make some strong but practical recommendations. One of these is that people responsible for bringing children into the world really need to have a long term commitment to one another. Parents need to be provided with free parenting classes to make them fully aware of their parental responsibilities and how they can meet the needs of their children.
The report recommends that advertising to children under 12 should be banned and all advertising for unhealthy food and alcohol should not be allowed before 9p.m.
Being a child today, perhaps from a broken family, with low educational achievement, low income and no support at home, is an enormously difficult situation to contend with. It’s up to parents, teachers and society to recognise these difficulties and do what is required to fix things.
To encourage your little ones to play outdoors more I recommend getting some good quality outdoor play equipment, maybe a slide swing playset, to get the little ones outside to play.
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