It's a deep, actual, and almost dizzying question. Between parental doubts, unhealed trauma, society's contradictory demands, and the power of technology, today's children sometimes seem to be floating in a world without stable reference points. So, who should be educating them? And above all: are we really doing it?
“Dad said this and mom said that… yes but grandma is okay with me doing this, at school we were told not to do that… On Instagram I learned something new and then my friends told me it was a good thing…”
Let's put ourselves in the children's shoes, I mean... Let's try to put ourselves in the shoes of today's children. This might seem easy at a time when we want to raise awareness about child psychology, positive psychology, mental health issues, coaches who flourish behind every networking meeting, psychologists invited on every TV set and who have opinions on everything, but in reality each period is different and we are today confronted with situations that go beyond what we could have imagined regarding the education of children. We have always heard ourselves or we have always heard from our parents "don't talk to strangers in the street" but ultimately with the smartphone it is the stranger who is already in the house, or even worse, in the children's room without parental supervision. I say worse because the television is generally in the living room so we can react instantly to what is shown on the screen. It's different with the phone; children hide it and don't dare ask questions about what they're watching.
“Don’t expect your children to become exactly like you. After all, they came into the world in a different time and different environment.”
We've talked a lot about child psychology in recent articles https://gabriel-rafi.com/anxiety-in-adolescents-and-children-understanding-and-supporting/
But today, let's start talking about parents :
Parents: Fundamental Pillars of Attachment
Attachment theory, developed by John Bowlby, emphasizes the crucial importance of parental figures in the early years of life. From their first months, children are psychologically shaped through the emotional security provided (or not) by their parents. Parental education is not only a transmission of rules, but also a building of self-esteem, emotional regulation, and the first relational models.
But parents are not alone in this process. From birth, other actors come to participate to the development of this child. It will be important to distinguish TO EDUCATE than TO RAISE. These actors, as we will see, will initially need validation from their parents, and as they grow, children will even go so far as to absolutely seek to go against the rules imposed by their parents. This happens even before adolescence.
As adults, we are therefore very often quite lost. Current generations of parents are often the first to question the educational models received. Many seek not to reproduce the patterns of domination, violence, or emotional neglect from which they themselves suffered. This desire to "do well," however, is accompanied by a feeling of educational insecurity: fear of doing badly, of frustrating, of hurting. The result? A hesitant, guilt-inducing stance, or even a tendency to delegate education to school, therapists, or... screens. We'll talk about screens a little bit later.
Children Facing a World Without a Clear Compass
Modern children are surrounded by a flood of information, unstable values, and contradictory discourse. They see videos on YouTube advocating total freedom, hear rules for living together at school, and perceive doubts and even unresolved inner struggles in their parents. Without a solid framework, without reassuring symbolic boundaries, they become their own premature educators. They learn to manage their time, emotions, sleep, and stimuli alone. And often, this exceeds their developmental capacities.
The child therefore first sees his parents and then school comes into play. This is where he learns socialization and respect for collective norms. From the age of 3, the child generally enters the school system. This plays an essential role in his secondary socialization: learning to live with others, respecting rules outside the family framework, developing cognitive autonomy. Teachers, in this context, are alternative authority figures. They help to forge in the child the notion of collective, effort, justice or injustice, profoundly influencing his relationship with the world. Friends, classmates or brothers and sisters also participate in education, sometimes unconsciously. Developmental psychologists emphasize how much the child learns through mimicry and identification. Group pressure, the need to belong or conflicts between peers are all educational situations that build the child, often outside the adult gaze. This parameter is very important, if not the most important, to assess the child's ability to grow up in the best conditions while adopting the behavior desired by the parents.
Society and its implicit values
As children grow up, they are increasingly exposed to people who interact with them, and they also develop their curiosity, drawn to this desire for autonomy. They are therefore naturally shaped by the social, political, and cultural climate in which they grow up. Gender norms, performance expectations, stereotypes, media discourse, and even laws shape their identity. For example, a child raised in a society that values competition will not develop the same benchmarks as another growing up in a culture centered on cooperation.
What makes children, and indeed even adults, vulnerable is not access to screens or a lot of activities, but rather their low resistance to following current trends. In fact, humans become weaker when they have to face a trend. Why? Because of the fear of being left out, of being rejected, of not being accepted, of being in an undefined category. Therefore, the ability to more or less follow the trend or refuse to follow it can be a good indicator of the conditions of freedom and autonomy to adopt.
Technology, screens, and social media: tools or substitutes?
Screens are no longer tools: they have become companions, relational substitutes, and attention-grabbers. Some children spend more time with digital content than with their own parents. However, algorithms are not neutral. They educate in their own way: through immediate gratification, polarization, and overstimulation. They shape desires, expectations, and relationships with oneself and others. But they teach neither frustration, nor patience, nor real relationships. Today, a growing proportion of education takes place through screens. From the age of 2, many children are exposed to content that influences their behavior, desires, fears, and worldview. YouTubers, cartoon characters, video games, and even TikTok influencers are becoming "role models," sometimes more listened to than their parents. This new situation poses unprecedented educational challenges.
So, to the following question: who should educate the child?
Personally, I would tend to answer that it's the role of the parents. As we've seen together, the various actors in a developing child's life bring a certain truth and can suggest a certain influence that directly confronts the one the child was nurtured with. It's only in adulthood, or let's say the adult stage, that the person concerned will learn to believe their own truths and, if they wish, do what they have been taught. But it's always good to remember that, faced with innocent beings who are non-stop learning and who are like sponges, we are all potentially examples of good behavior. When you are at a pedestrian crossing and a child in front of you with his parents is waiting to cross because of the red light for pedestrians, we also wait to show a good example.. Therefore we become aware of the importance of each person in this role of educator in relation to children who learn from us, compare their preconceived ideas from their parents with the ideas proposed by other adults and form their own opinion which they will strengthen in adulthood.