Recent incidents of our youth performing daring stunts have garnered mixed views from the public.
Some have called for the authorities to establish more avenues and programmes for youth to express their restless energy, and that the youths had acted irresponsibly and were ignorant of the dangers, while others said they must be sternly punished for putting their lives and that of others in danger.
My take is that the incidents revealed society’s failings to inculcate the right values in our children. What is required is a strategic plan to be jointly managed by the youth, society and authorities, marking out clearer areas of responsibilities and defining strategies and workplans to fill up the “void of living” among the young and restless.
This is not to say that parents have neglected their duties and responsibilities but more of being unable to cope with the increasing demands of today’s youth.
Keeping the “dialogue” channel open is always the sensible way in the parent-children relationship.
Children will always “test” parents. They will make unnecessary demands on our time, patience and money.
And because parents want to please their children, they soon give in to the demands.
Eventually, parents will lose out because their young will keep asking for more. Once this happens, we can declare the parent-children dialogue as good as over.
So how do we as parents keep our vigil on their behaviour? In most cases, unfortunately, the situation has never been in our favour.
Some parents favour letting others do the job for them, from primary to secondary school and university. During these days of high consumerism when we keep chasing after “material goods”, we often forget that we have to stop and take a step back. In our haste, we are losing touch with our children.
We are only too happy to let the teachers at school look after them, or allow friends to play with them. We merely pile them with things such as computers and gadgets, including high-end smartphones.
The communication is lost. Parents must take steps to fill up as much of their free time as possible.
Parents must jointly galvanise resources available and work with the government, educationists, civil society and youth on a long-term plan of strategies and goals for the future of the young.
The idea is to try to keep them busy throughout the day — filling up that void for the youth.
DR AZHARI-KARIM
Kuala Lumpur