Are your children toxic? I don’t mean ‘toxic’ in the pain-in-the-neck teenager state that occurs between the ages of 12 and 16 and makes you wish you could flush them down the toilet because they grunt instead of talk, and loll about sighing endlessly for hours on end. I mean, are your children having the kind of childhood that is damaging them in a way that will debilitate them for the rest of their lives?

 

If they are not having a toxic childhood it is probably because you are not letting them lead the kind of lifestyle that many, if not most, of their friends are leading; a lifestyle that is causing great concern with teachers from many different countries around the world.

 

All around the world, teachers are examining and discussing how the cultural and lifestyle changes of the last 25 years are affecting the lives of children. They know that many of the changes that benefit adults are far from healthy for our children. “ A toxic cocktail of the side effects of cultural change is now damaging the social, emotional and cognitive development of a growing number of children with knock on effects for their behaviour,” is how educationist and author Sue Palmer explains it.

 

Last week 110 teachers, psychologists, children's authors and leading childcare experts called on the government of Britain to act to prevent childhood being killed off altogether. According to them - processed food, computer games and over-competitive education were poisoning today’s children, and that increasingly children were being forced “to act and dress like mini-adults",

 

Research backs up what these childcare experts are saying. Changes in diet, childcare patterns, parenting, family structures, play, bed times, family interaction, education, marketing, peer pressure, technology, electronics, and the way we communicate with our children are creating a ‘toxic mix’ that is damaging them. Children are becoming increasingly unhealthy, depressed and experiencing growing levels of behavioral and developmental problems. Not only this! The experts also point out that the children lack first hand experience of the world, and regular interaction with their parents.

 

Of course we do not need experts or research to tell us that academic pressure, marketing, absent careerist parents, and the rest of the modern toxic mix is damaging our children. We can see it here in the increase in childhood obesity and childhood diabetes; in the rise in the number of children with attention deficit problems and in the increase in numbers of hyperactive children.  We know it from the stress and strain related to exams and study workloads and in the increase in study/exam related suicides.

 

So before you answer the question “Are your children toxic?” Take a good long look at them and their lifestyle. And remember, parents don’t usually poison their kids on purpose. Adults too are susceptible to “market forces” and peer pressure. It is almost natural when all around you other people’s kids are eating junk and living toxic lives to look at your own child and think: mine must too….  But it doesn’t have to be that way. Luckily for all of us there are plenty of changes we can make to detoxify our children’s childhood. All it needs is a little thought and some common sense. In the process we can help detoxify ourselves.