Steemit Engagement Challenge (SEC)-w14s1- Neglects in families, the effects on kids

Good morning friends of the community. Thank you for proposing this contest and for providing the opportunity to share our ideas on a topic that is perhaps discussed too little but I believe is more widespread than it seems.

Responsibility involves answering to oneself and others for the consequences of one's actions. Family responsibility means being accountable for the consequences of actions related to one's family unit, especially to the children.

From my point of view, neglecting responsibilities regarding one's family essentially means prioritizing other things over spending time with one's life partner and children.

Immagine di Freepik

For example, many couples I know spend a lot of time away from home due to work, delegating the care of their children to school, babysitters, sports coaches, and other non-parental figures. In practice, they give up performing their parental role, and it is reduced to merely buying their children all kinds of food or material goods, beyond what is necessary for living, and scolding or taking punitive measures if the children misbehave during the day. On weekends, these parents engage in activities such as grocery shopping, cleaning the house, shopping in the city center, meeting at the bar, or going out to dinner with friends, sometimes bringing their children along. During these moments, the children have no opportunity to converse with the parent and have their full attention because the adult is too busy shopping and socializing with other adults. To keep their children calm, these parents, in the little time they spend with them, start providing them with cell phones and tablets at a young age to entertain them while the adults are engaged in their activities.

I observe these dynamics among my acquaintances or simply by going to the mall on Sunday afternoons.

In my opinion, this means neglecting responsibilities towards one's family and, in particular, towards the children, although many of my acquaintances would disagree with me because they provide their children with everything they could want. They fulfill every desire, buying everything they ask for or enrolling them in all the extracurricular activities they want to do. This is thanks to their great commitment to work and their indisputable professional abilities, which have allowed them to earn a lot of money and afford a quality life. In reality, these are people dazzled by the lights of consumerism emitted by the shop windows of shopping malls, depriving their children of their loving presence.

Immagine di nuraghies su Freepik

These parents are neglecting their children because they do not share any significant experiences with them. They are not involved in their education, as they are not instilling any values other than those related to earning money. They are not listening to what their children have to say or understanding their feelings. They don't take the time to hug them, pamper them, and look into their eyes to tell them they are loved regardless of their school grades or the result of the last football game.

According to these parents, their duty and responsibility are to ensure that their children have all the objects and clothes that other children flaunt (such as the latest model smartphone, trendy jacket, prestigious brand shoes, etc.) so that their kids do not feel different or even inferior to their peers.

These kids grow up without being able to build genuinely human relationships in the first and most important educational and emotional community in which they are born and raised: the family.

Immagine di master1305 su Freepik

Young people, deprived of the loving presence and human affection from parents who, instead, provide them with every material possession, grow up with serious difficulties in establishing empathetic, friendly, and loving relationships based on values such as mutual respect, the ability to cooperate, to listen, and the ability to handle and accept "no" and frustrations. For them, there are no human beings to love; others are merely means to obtain what they desire because their parents did not raise them considering them individuals with feelings and vulnerabilities but as children who always desire or need something that can be quickly and easily bought with money, and to whom everything is owed because they should not suffer.

In the face of suffering, fragility, and denials from others, these young people often show uncertainty, fear, and incapacity, leading to forms of aggression that manifest with self-harming acts, vandalism, or violence towards others. The prevalence of these phenomena associated with the lifestyle of the community in which I live is making me think that there is a correlation between neglecting family responsibilities, which, for me, involve education and affection and require active and attentive parental presence, and the aggressiveness that young people exhibit in language and behavior.

Therefore, my advice to parents is to spend fewer hours away from home for work, if possible, even at the cost of earning less money, and to spend more time with their children, providing them with affection, listening to them, instilling values, and helping them personally and promptly overcome every small difficulty before it becomes a bigger and deeper problem.

To young people, I recommend trusting their parents, talking to them about any small disturbance or problem, and vociferously and in every possible way, seeking the educational care they need. They can also seek help from other adults who can encourage them to connect with the suffering caused by the emotional deprivation they are experiencing, becoming aware of the pain and emptiness growing inside them day by day.

Thank you for reading my post! See you soon!