What you need to know:
- It’s time to start catering to your children’s emotional need.
- Readers debate the pros and cons.
Parents always strive to provide material necessities and luxuries to their children. However, how much importance is placed in catering to their emotional needs? Gulf News readers debate
Give time and attention
Attend to your child’s needs the right way
I believe that parents from the present and past generations strive to give the best of themselves to raise and prepare their children for their life. The success of the past generations to transmit the feeling of love and positive self-esteem has permitted the development of civiliSations and great achievements in human history. Therefore, I won’t say that we are better than our parents for catering to children’s emotional needs. However, I agree that the easy access to information in today’s world has obviously increased the awareness of parents on the importance of catering to children’s emotional needs.
I also think that the excess of love and support to a child would have way bigger positive impact than negative. Hence, I do not worry about spoiling my children by giving them support and consideration. I even believe that parents never give enough attention and recognition to their children. The thing to be careful about is to cater to your children’s needs with your time and listening rather than material things such as toys.
From Mr Alexandre Beurton
Internal audit senior manager based in Dubai
Build bonds
An emotional connection with your child pays off
I think that there are a number of reasons the current generation of parents cater more to their children’s emotional wants. Firstly, we are more career focused and because of economic conditions, we tend to have lesser children per family. This way we have more time to give them the love and attention they need.
Secondly, technological advancements have made it easier to access information and even interact with other parents and learn from their mistakes. I regularly keep in touch with other young mums on social media and exchange opinions and learn about children’s needs.
Secondly, technological advancements have made it easier to access information and even interact with other parents and learn from their mistakes.
I think that actively developing an emotional bond and being there to address a child’s emotional and mental issues is extremely important. This will last and affect them for a lifetime. It helps build trust between the parents and kids as well as helps both of the groups feel more secure. The children will then feel that the parents know them and will be there through thick and thin. There are plenty of emotional issues I’ve had that if my parents didn’t advise me on them, I wouldn’t know how to deal with them.
From Ms Shima Rashidi
Architect based in Dubai
Don’t overdo it
We tend to underestimate how capable children are
We all want to be the best parents we can be for our children, but there is often conflicting advice on how to raise a child who turns out to be a confident, kind and emotionally balanced individual.
We all want to be the best parents we can be for our children, but there is often conflicting advice on how to raise a child who turns out to be a confident, kind and emotionally balanced individual.
In current society, often both the parents are working and our children today are living in nuclear families. We are more concerned and focused towards the emotional needs of our children as we don’t get to spend quality time with them, leaving us no choice but to learn through experiments and experiences of others and elders.
As parents, we try to cover up the loss of time and hence land up making up for it. In our pursuit to build an emotional bond with pur children I feel like we over compensate. We have stopped calibrating our expectations towards our children, and it could have a negative effect in the long run. I think we underestimate how much our children are capable of doing independently, and we must leave them to resolve their conflicts and problems themselves.
From Ms Anjum Hasan
Biology teacher based in Sharjah
Poll results: Do you think parents are more emotionally catering to their children compared to older generations?
Yes: 76%
No: 24%
Have your say: Would the increase in attending to children’s emotional needs have a negative or positive effect?
