Walsch: Tomorrow's Kids Hitting a Little Too Close To Home

Walsch: Tomorrow’s Kids Hitting a Little Too Close To Home

Chapter 21 of Tomorrow's GodTomorrow's God by Neale Donald Walsch deals with kids and education – looking at what we are doing to raise our kids now and what it will be like Tomorrow.

Have you ever squirmed because what you were reading was hitting a little closer to home than you would like? Well, I was totally squirming during this description of today's kids:

"Children are being left to their own devices, relegated to their own little worlds, more and more and more of the time as both parents work and involve themselves in other things. Children spend hours in front of screens – TV screens, computer screens, video-game screens, movie screens" (298).

Sigh. While I was reading this my kids were in the other room enjoying the beginning of their Spring Break – playing video games and watching the computer. Walsch mentions how they can easily spend a whole weekend doing nothing but staring at a screen. The squirming got worse as I thought about the days, and days, and days that my kids have spent doing just that – especially the boys with the video games.

We bought the Wii because it promised lots of movement and action but we quickly figured out that you can work most of the games sitting on the couch, and then the oldest figured out how to convert it to a Playstation and now they don't have to move at all. Sigh.

Then there was this statement, "send a kid outside today, and he doesn't know what to do with himself" (299). Too true – I've actually had this yelled at me when I threatened to toss them outside, especially with the youngest.

According to God, Tomorrow we will teach children that Love is really all there is, that fear and guilt are the only enemies of humans and that God is "never, ever, going to punish them" (300). Though there will be consequences to their actions, they will know that it is not God hating them, or punishing them because they are not good enough. Children will be taught concepts and ideas such as fairness, tolerance, equality, and honesty and invited to create a new future without fear of coercion or punishment (302, 306). Adults will learn new ways to interact with their kids and Walsch recommends How To Talk So Kids Can LearnHow To Talk So Kids Can Learn by Faber and Mazlish as an excellent resource.

I think I definitely need to get that book, and until it arrives, the kids are screen-free and hoofed outside between 11 a.m. and 4 p.m. It's not perfect but it is a start. And they seem to be enjoying their screen-free time: they talk, they imagine, they create a new experience. Cool.