Childhood’s future?

Thirty years ago, when I used to drive along El Camino with 4-year-old first granddaughter in her car seat beside me (It was legal then), she would often point out something that she wanted me to see. “Grandma, look at the pretty rainbow,” she once exclaimed about an arc of colors in some unknown direction. “Sorry, I can’t look now,” I answered. “The most important thing for me to do is to look where I’m going.”

After a brief and thoughtful silence, she said. “No, Aunt Col said that the most important thing is love.” “Yes,” I agreed. “You are right. It’s very important that we love each other. That is the most important thing in the world. But while we’re loving each other, we must be careful to look where we are going.”

As I thought about this later, the importance of love and looking where we’re going says it all when it comes to the plight of so many children in today’s society. The increasing number of children growing up without that all-important love and the great unwillingness of so many parents and so many other adults (including government leaders) to consider the consequences for the future is threatening a national disaster of unheard proportions.

Besides children who are unfortunately unloved (the physically and emotionally abused and neglected), this is evident in the many parents who “love” their children only for what they expect the kids can do for them — like give the parent the love that he/she didn’t get as a child, be a cute and/or obedient diversion, and make the parents look good through the child’s accomplishments. And they love them as long as the children don’t get in the way of the parents’ activities and goals too much. And as far as many of our government leaders are concerned (and society in general), professed interest in this most precious national resource is merely lip service.

As Richard Louv wrote in his book, “Childhood’s Future”: “Childhood today is defined by the expansion of experience and the contraction of positive adult contact. ... Children and adults pass each other in the night at ever increasing speeds, and the American social environment becomes increasing lonely for both.”

What a child needs most is at least one adult (more is better) who bonds with him/her. Though, at times the parents may wish they were doing something else, they care enough for the welfare of their child to take a lot of healthy interest in her/him. “Our deep desire to connect with our children doesn’t pay off if we don’t give our kids enough time to do the connecting.” — Christine Carter, Ph.D., “Raising Happiness.” The fact that this is happening for so few children does not mean that it is not essential for the optimum development of the child. Many parents and a lot of our supporting institutions seem to have gone off to pursue their own interests — a truly dismaying and serious threat to the future of our children and our society as a whole.

You wonder what is in store for well-loved children when, as they grow up, they have to deal with so many who have not been so fortunate and with institutions that make it more difficult for them to make their way to productive adulthood. What chance will they have to see a rainbow through the numerous dark clouds of abuse and neglect that will hover over their horizons? As M. Scott Peck wrote in “The Road Less Traveled,” “The feeling of being valuable … is essential to mental health and a cornerstone of self-discipline. It is the direct product of parental love … When children have learned through the love of their parents” (and other adults) “to feel valuable, it is almost impossible for the vicissitudes of adulthood to destroy their spirit.”

Since 1984, Dorothy Dimitre has written more than 950 columns for various local newspapers. Her email address is gramsd@aceweb.com.