Could this provide answers to 21st Century parenting?

Schools have closed, and all national exams completed. All primary school and secondary school children are at home. This is a time when majority of parents, especially the working class who are fully engaged from morning to evening, fear for their children. There may not be enough sumptuous food to eat and stylish clothes to wear, but that is not the real problem. Fears are rife on the kind of influence children will be exposed to during their spare time at home. As the famous cliché quote goes, an idle mind is the devil’s workshop. Things have gotten worse with the digital age. Fears span beyond the usual peer pressure that may corrupt young minds and engagement in unruly activities that may be illegal.
Take the example of Charles. The civil servant who works in the outskirts of Nairobi has two children; 14-year-old Moses who sat for KCPE exams and 5 year old Abigael who just joined pre-school. As we were heading home from work recently, I met Charles and we started our usual chat. I noticed that much of our conversation was inclined towards children whom, after crossing the first academic bridge in life, become unruly and disobedient. But it is the influence that has come with technology that is giving Charles sleepless nights, quite literally.

Sleepless nights
“My son doesn’t sleep nowadays. I gave him one of my phones and since then, he is glued to social media most of the time. When I wake up at night, I find him still chatting with his friends. He also wakes up too late and cannot do any constructive work at home,” laments Charles.
The father of two has been withdrawing privileges after privileges from his son but none of these tactics seems to bear fruits. He has resorted to asking for a change of work station to allow him introduce his son to holiday learning opportunities in the city that can keep him engaged before the situation gets out of hand.
This is not an isolated case. Majority of working parents are crying foul over a technology wave that is taking over parenting by storm. This has everything to do with messaging apps that have made live updates about life and its niceties a necessity.

Digital social lives
In the spirit of competition and standing out, these young souls live a lie, as they hide from their parent’s eyes. Their digital social lives are full of parties, trips, and photo-shoots as proof. Unfortunately, it is during such periods that children lose lives in road accidents due to drunk driving and stampedes while attending poorly organized parties. Some are radicalized to terrorism while others subscribe to drugs and drug addiction or other activities that most parents are unaware of.
While there are many solutions to this parenting problem that is quickly overburdening the working parent, the use of M. Scott Peck’s tools can lead to a highly disciplined individual.
In his book The Road Less Travelled, Peck defines delayed gratification as the process of scheduling the pain and pleasure of life in such a way as to enhance the pleasure by meeting and experiencing the pain first and getting over with it.

The tool of scheduling
Children as young as 5 years olds are able to learn this tool of scheduling, where they can complete their homework before they watch television. When they reach the adolescent stage, such children carry on with this behavior. Sadly, a substantial number fall short of this norm. Peck describes such children as problem students.
“Despite average of better intelligence, their grades are poor simply because they do not work. Play now, pay later is their motto,” says Peck.
Such individuals avoid all the important and painful issues. Life gets disastrous when the attempt by parents and society to intervene fails, and the children begin reaping the bitter fruits of disobedience. They drop out of school, land in disastrous marriages, accidents, psychiatric hospitals or in jail. The ball rolls back to parents. Do not let your children live an easy life when indeed the real world is tough. Let them face the music from the age of five. If a child is old enough to go to school, they can clean the toilet. Let them do it before they can play with their toys. Let delayed gratification be the number one rule in every household.