Parents must be equipped with knowledge to control, guide

Jayantha SENEVIRATHNA

As the countdown approaches the Point of No Return (PNR), the crew gets more and more anxious. Inside the spaceship Centaurs 1, for the time travelers on board, PNR entails a critical point. It’s either a new life in a new solar system that may or may not support life, or return home, the Earth, for another 500 more years! Hence, it’s very important to be guided by reason.

“Still life without hope,” a crewmember laments mulling over dark conditions prevailing over the Earth. Driven by some quite reckless but caring elders, the crew, mostly youth, are in search of a new world. Had they been able to come into a sensible conclusion? Indeed, Centaurs 1 has driven even the most passionate reader a bit crazy but somewhat oriented.

Even on earth, prior to the first flight into a new world, each and every species needs parental protection, guidance, and training.

Deep in the wild, as their young mature, even animals engage in a fierce struggle to protect their young from an assortment of predators.

It could be snakes, hawks, owls, or wild cats in a starry night.

In a similar vein, humans never leave out even a domestic dog in broad daylight.

For them, the humans, the list seems to be more vivid, bizarre, and, frequently, abstract.

No wonder pornography, pornographers, and its errant abusers lead the list of predators with best ratings alongside marauding rapists and serial killers.

Like it or not, with ever increasing forces of globalization, we have been becoming a global community day by day.

And, we shouldn’t sacrifice its benign influences, just to smother malign manipulations taking place at random. How do we get the most out of this information superhighway sidestepping pedophiles and various other predators?

As blessed parents of the first generation of internet explorers, we must be driven by a quest for knowledge and a desire to keep abreast with the young than being mere onlookers. At least, it may be just to find acceptance and companionship. It’s not so hard adjusting. Many parents have already become adept users working closely with their children.

It’s no secret that few parents are adequately knowledgeable, informed, and prepared for the ups and downs typical for the early childhood development that takes place under full parental protection.

In this crucial period of transformation, our children experience a multitude of intellectual, physical, and social adaptations.

Far from being the isolated individual of the pre-internet era, modern-day youngsters are connected to an assortment of communication links benign and malign as well.

Therefore, if parents are not well equipped with the knowledge to control and guide, they will never be able to protect their children from the menace, let alone enjoying the changes going on.

Most of us caring, responsible parents respect the changes going within the child’s world and try to respond appropriately.

But, in the quest of instilling our values about relationships, sex, and love, we always see their world in our parent’s shoes, exactly in the child’s grandpa’s shoes. Fatefully, we close the eyes to irresponsible messages they may or may not receive as a habit.

Exposure to pornography shapes an immature teenager’s attitudes, values and, often, his or her behaviour.

Sexual callousness, distorted perceptions, appetite for deviant sex, lack of respect for marriage as a lasting institution, and abnormal sexual behaviours may the ultimate outcome if the habit is taken up for sometime in a teenage life.

In confronting the threat, the resource in shortest supply is neither technology, nor capital.

What keeps lawmakers guessing is the scarcity of knowledge.

That is the talent to keep the young empowered enough to sidestep so called evils along the information superhighway.

For such a project, required capital is small and easily accessible, and information on pornography is widely available on the internet.

But the prime source of advantage is the mature talented people with special training in early adolescence.

If you are armed with the knowledge and skills to help your teenage son jump over the hurdles, it will not be a big task to avoid unwanted and obscene literature by themselves.

Where to start? First, we must be well conversant with adolescence. Next, we can focus more on new technologies at least tentatively.

So it becomes easier for us to begin by putting ourselves in our child’s shoes.

Hence, we can remain in the background providing both spiritual and physical support the children need to venture out into the new world.