Why so many disturbed youngsters, so much addiction, crime, violence in this country? We have focused as a country on the things that don’t bring a feeling of love, protection, security, positive values, or peace to our children. We have focused on the outer values while we have neglected the inner values of positive, loving family life. Parents are often stressed about jobs and money and so tired when they do come home they can’t be effective parents. We have to teach our children positive values through our actions and example thereby creating, helping develop, good character in our children. Perhaps one answer is for parents to take less stressful jobs or one parent take part-time work while their children are very young. 

We focus on the outer trappings of money, status, greed, always wanting more, instead of being content with what we have – as long as we have our basic needs and a bit more met. 

Our children experience being left without their parent’s presence so much of the time (or when they are there they are preoccupied or very tired) and this can lead to their thinking that jobs, money, everything else is more important to their parents than they are – more important than being there for them. Quality time does not replace having a parent or nurturing family member or friend who can hold and hug the child when they need that, take walks with the child, teach them to ride a bike, have their little friends over and so many other things that create happiness and security for a child most importantly until the child is 5 or 6 years of life. Children need a parent that sees that the child has nourishing meals, takes naps when needed, sends them to bed on time so they are rested when they get up in morning and spends some time talking to the child (from birth on), spends some time playing with the child and providing creative play like clay, water play, coloring, painting, playing with little toy people and a playhouse (to help the child express all their feelings and emotions they sometimes can’t handle and help these feelings come out during creative play). And after the tender years of perhaps up to 6 years of age, children still need to have the presence of their parents as much as possible or a close relative or friend around who is someone nurturing and someone who is around when the child comes home from school. They need people near them to talk to them, to help them understand right and wrong, someone to teach them to be good to themselves, to value themselves and those around them. Someone with good values who knows that caring for a child helps them grow into individuals who have self-love and therefore learns to care for and love others. The TV and movies teach the wrong values of violence and sex exploitation. And the commercials are mostly lies for the sake of making money and what kind of values are they teaching? So if our children spend time watching screens instead of being led in positive, constructive ways of thinking and positive activities, is it any wonder they grow up with distorted values and maybe worse – maybe self loathing and wanting to strike back? It isn’t just in school that they sometimes learn inappropriate values or learn some things much earlier than they should be exposed to these ideas – what we allow into our children’s everyday viewing and hearing is feeding them mostly with false and detrimental values.

If we start to go back to the value of strong family units for children they have more of a chance of surviving the chaos and false values inherent in our society. I am grateful for the freedom we have in this country – but freedom does not mean license to do or express whatever. In the Montessori system of education they stress and teach liberty (freedom) along with discipline. We cannot have one without the other or we have an anything goes approach to living and that can lead to dysfunction, chaos and crime and a lack of caring for ourselves and others which leads to depression and possibly mental illness.