Sometimes I think that today the conversations about appearance are something completely different than just 15-20 years ago because the image children/teenagers compare themselves to or have to live up to doesn't even exist. The body they see in front of them on a screen is not really attainable.
At the same time, they are perhaps wiser precisely because they are forced to be critical of sources and see things through quite early. Empty. my 9-year-old understands that Barbie is too thin to be able to walk if she were a real person and that the images she sees in many contexts are fake. I don't know if I caught on at that age. It wasn't something we talked about either. Barbie existed and we just had to deal with it. Today they talk, question, etc. It's probably not so completely hopeless. At all.
The warped ideals have, in a way, forced us into the conversations and forced a backlash, and the questioning feels more obvious. However, that does not make you as a parent any less worried today. The complete explosions young people are exposed to on a daily basis is not an easy match. They will be affected and they will feel bad. We probably cannot eliminate that risk.
What we can do, however, is to be the counterweight. Show on options. Talk about everything that feels, no matter how clever it is. We cannot stop the war the children are in, but we must be the safe harbor where they can land every night. Someone said that it has never been more difficult to be a parent than it is today and even though all generations have faced different challenges, I think that there may be something in it for the reason that today we expose the children to something that has never been tried before. We don't know anything, but it might be okay. The alternative of moving far from society is quite far from most people's reality. Perhaps the dangerous thing is not that social media (and more) exists, but how it is used and how we adults relate to it. If we accept the times we live in and understand that we can actually be the opposite of what the children experience?
I myself feel that I often find myself in some kind of war about all this. What the children get/don't get, should/shouldn't, etc. ad infinitum. But the times when I feel that I am in a good flow/a good period with the children - we talk, reflect, both about how the world looks and about feelings - I am less afraid of external influences. In the conversations, they get space for the feelings about what they experience and all that which is outside my control as a parent seems a little less destructive.
It is the case that we humans feel at our very best when we are allowed to feel and given space to express those feelings. The world will change trillions more times, new developments will lead to what today would be called madness. We are in the middle of an Ai revolution and who knows how what we take for granted today – school, professions etc., will look like in just a few years?
I think, however, that what we can know is this: feelings will continue to exist. And the more we move towards a society where emotional life is not allowed to play along, the greater the need to feel and show emotions will become. After all, feelings have the attribute that they don't disappear when we try to erase or ignore them - they just take on new, often scarier forms.
Having said that, I think this is not a completely crazy idea: if the Ai revolution is here, the emotion revolution will come with it! (And it is more than welcome!)
To help the new generation become the best at emotions - come in and look at our emotional cards HERE
