Raising Kids With Character

On October 15, 2015 the BBC ran an article that stated the astonishing figure that more people had died taking selfies than had been killed by sharks. Dumbfounded I posted it on my Facebook page demanding to know “What on earth is the matter with people?” Here are two things I learned: 1) People’s narcissism is what’s wrong with people and 2) people’s obstinacy is what is wrong with people.

First of all I should admit that I occasionally post a selfie of myself, but usually it is because I’ve spent two hours making myself look like an old man for Halloween (man that was cool) or because I’m being silly with my kids. It’s not because I think I’m particularly good-looking and therefore a visual gift to the world. I would say that me-ism is reaching heights never dreamt of in previous generations. I actually think that the selfie phenomenon is an indication of the sickness of the human heart.

Just how does a parent combat this trend? Well you can always drive over the means by which selfies are posted – I do have an affinity for the dramatic – but let’s be honest half of the selfies I see of my friends are from when they steal my phone. No I don’t think that the removal of all technology is the answer (feel free to limit it though) if it is true, as I suspect, that the selfie is an indication of something gone awry in the human heart then only a heart fix will work.

The heart typically needs to have a dose of humility to change so I would suggest volunteering somewhere. A community non-profit, at a soup kitchen, at your church, or simply at the park picking up rubbish for an hour. When we serve others – even Mother Nature – our heart naturally rebels and we need to engage our will to carry on. There is something powerful in coming in contact with people who may be less fortunate than you as well, so service is a powerful tool in training the heart to think of others.

But what about obstinacy? This was made abundantly clear by the comments that followed my post. To be fair it was just a couple of people, but I swear, there are some Facebookers out there who simply disagree with every post because disagreeing is fashionable (or something.) It’s ridiculous, who defends, the fool who puts themselves in harm’s way purely to capture a daring picture… of themselves? No to defend that fool is to be the fool.

Again, there are two issues, the first is just that people will argue stupid things on Facebook regardless of their merit, but also that there is an overwhelming absence of social responsibility. I mean to think that you endangering your own life and that you have a right to do so because it only impacts you, is the most ridiculous notion but it speaks to our narcissism, doesn’t it? Are humans truly so self-centred, so isolated in our fake social media world that we think that we don’t impact others by our deaths?

Parents, we need to combat this nonsense. We need to teach our kids to think of others as better than themselves (in a healthy way.) We can’t allow more children to grow up thinking that life, and death, should be experienced to the exclusion of anyone else in the world.