Observing children is a thorny matter that many parents need to think about carefully, because not all kinds of supervision of children are beneficial and lead to good results in the parenting process.
Surveillance of children can be required and useful, and it may be a cause of problems and conflicts between members of the same family, in an open life, especially with the presence of smart phones and Internet services that connect the whole world to each other, and every person in it can reach whoever wants and what he wants At any time in the way he wants, parents have come to believe that monitoring children is necessary and indispensable to protect them from evil, and on the other hand children see that in an age like ours characterized by freedom, the concept of their families about the subject of supervision is rejected from the ground up because it means restriction, not love, which is contradictory. The reality is also characterized by freedom, so you come and watch your children and allow yourself to take away their freedom, and they see this as an act and consider it an infringement of their rights.
Problems arise between watching or not?
Leave the freedom open to them or monitor their use of it?
What are the means of monitoring that can be used by parents?
Surveillance will be a safety for them or will it infect them with psychological complex?
The opinion of educational scientists on the issue of monitoring children?
Are we really prepared for such an act?
Is it that a perfect being so that I can observe others and judge their actions?
All these questions are raised constantly, and I will try to find answers to them through the article.
What are the benefits and harms of monitoring children?
The nature of the relationship that binds them
In the beginning, and before we evaluate the subject and define its frameworks, we must analyze the nature of the relationship between parents and children so that we can get acquainted with the data we possess, and then we can direct and behave well.
Is it a relationship based on understanding and love, or on the orders and prohibitions and quarrels between the two parties?
Unfortunately, the lack of awareness and education among parents is one of the most important causes of misbehavior and the difficulty of correct parenting. Few people read books that talk about proper education or follow the results of recent scientific research in raising children, as well as few who take a training course in sound education, for example or So that they attend some educational seminars on parenting, and this is due to multiple factors, including poor awareness of a sense of the size of the issue, or their preoccupation with work, lack of time or financial shortcomings, so the relationship between parents and children is not good in most cases, because if it were, the parents would not feel the necessity to monitor children Rather, the feeling of the necessity of the matter indicates that the relationship between them is not healthy, even if the parents claim that whatever they do, the outside world leaves a bad impression on the children, and then the relationship becomes tense and lose a lot.
But the matter is simply that the child from the age of (0-6) is you as a father / mother who is responsible for him and raises him and during this period the personality of the child is formed and the values that lead his life later on, there may be external influences, but they are not of great influence if you are well educated, During this period, values and principles are instilled in the child and he grows psychologically, physically and cognitively, and parents make many mistakes in raising their children, so you find them asking their children not to lie while they lie and forbid them to do some actions and they do the same, which puts the child in a state of contradiction and confuses him and falls in the middle area between determining wrong and right We, as parents, are fully responsible for raising children and for the condition that they will reach, and this is what the pioneer of psychoanalysis, Freud, confirmed when he said, Give me ten children, and I will specify for you the doctor from the engineer from the thief from the cleric, that is, by raising you for him until the age of five, his personality will be formed so you do not blame On him when he grows up because it is you.
Their relationship to society
The relationship of children with society comes through their parents, so the child is not thrown into the street to deal with him alone and discover it, but at the beginning he has to understand the external reality and understand what awaits him and arm himself with the knowledge that will help him achieve his goals. Man is born of his environment that affects and is affected by this fact.
But where is the human basis? Where is the base he was raised on?
A fragile and weak person is only someone who is affected by his environment positively and negatively, but he who owns his tools interacts with the environment as much and tries to understand and explain it, and he is the one who determines the behavior that he behaves, you have a product that is well produced will withstand competition with others’s products and will tolerate competition policy or if it is weak He will withdraw early, we have gathered together we have difficulties, obstacles, and troubles in life, but the decisive factor is how we deal with it, who skips it and passes, who stands with it, and who deceives it and turns it in his favor. the society!
Means of control
There are many and different methods of monitoring children through parents, including: monitoring his behavior at home, monitoring his phone and monitoring social media shared with it such as Facebook and Twitter, monitoring friends and others, and the new technology also has great merit in this matter. We will now find many programs and applications that Through it, you can monitor everything they do on the Internet or on their smartphones, and not only the matter here, but also spying through the mobile phone and the GPS feature and much more, as if we are mafia bosses and we deal with gang members and not our children who were on the day of weak children unable to do anything on their own .
How to be monitoring
The spread of modern technology, such as smartphones, the iPad and others, constitutes a benefit and a threat at the same time, as it is like any other devices that have advantages and disadvantages, and many children do not know this and therefore it is possible that they are drifting into sites that are not theirs and afflicting them with the curse of technology and reaping only the negative side And what confirms this is the emergence of some new psychological diseases related to technology such as Facebook addiction, addiction to keeping up with the latest devices and many others, which are recognized diseases and a program is developed to treat them, so it is necessary to understand, explain and clarify them well for children and to communicate this information to them and monitor their behavior with it and this is A good way to monitor children is beneficial for both parties without directly interfering with their private life.
Suggested solutions
Instead of observing children why we do not build a new relationship between us and them, and extend the bridge of communication, dialogue and discussion better than the policy of prevention, punishment, authority and control, and that comes to us through simple steps such as:
Building a wall of trust Trust in our current era is largely missing between the two parties, and each of them considers that it is a match for the other, and not only this, but also each of them sees that it is the most cultured, the most knowledgeable and the most understanding of the others, so parents see that their long experience by virtue of age is the one who own True knowledge and their decisions are always correct, and the children must obey it. Otherwise, this means that they are rebellious and rioters, and the children see that they are the most modern and knowledgeable in the world now from their many acquaintances. You will not find, for example, a father or mother who understands technology in the way her children understand, they are undoubtedly the most know because they are the most curious in this field. The children see that they have the right decision, that the father and the mother are old fashion, and communication and understanding between them collapses, so when we do not build a solid wall of trust between us and them, and that we want to monitor them, it would be from a distant space and without direct intervention only to help, the situation will be better for everyone.
Friendship. Fathers ’friendship with children makes their children enjoy freedom in exchange for parents’ enjoyment of knowledge of all their children’s affairs, so be a friend you know more about their affairs, be always available to help and give them the time they want and communicate with them always and do not take you by the concerns of life, be friends.
Love, yes, love and emotional tenderness are the only guarantor for solving problems. Your children’s feeling that you love them and are afraid of them will make them close to you, and social media will not take them as everyone complains. Stop criticizing, understand the situation and act with love towards them.
We need to watch a little over children activities over Internet, because in this dangerous times, and pandemic circumstances, kids get network activity a lot at their homes. We can through talk discover what they watch or how they behave.