Technology can facilitate or disrupt our lifestyles, depending on how it is used. Parents and adults responsible for young children have always been concerned about their protection and safety, and it is necessary to make it clear that it is necessary to prevent the disappearance of minors, especially the youngest and in scenarios as conducive to a loss as a beach crowded with people in the middle of summer.
But with or without technology, first of all we must use common sense and teach the minimum survival skills to children: (bracelets or watches, although they are fantastic and give us a sense of control and security, can be removed, lost or misplaced).
Survival skills for children
Children under 3 years of age should be watched, and more than that: be with them (cell phone off), play and share the pleasure of their discoveries.
From 3 or 4 years old:
- Teach your child his/her full name, what his/her parents’ names are. The name of the street where he/she lives, or the hotel where he/she is staying, if we are on vacation.
- When you arrive at the beach, locate a “Meeting Point”: for example, the lifeguard station or the bar, and ask your child to come and ask for help if he/she gets lost.
- You can also write on the inside of his or her arm with marker pen your phone number.
Children over 5:
- Teach them addresses and contact numbers. They can memorize them. You can also show them the phone number for missing children, which is 116000.
- Mark a territory where they can move and play on the beach, in the urbanization… always having them in sight, ask them to approach your place with certain regularity.
- They should already be aware of certain dangers and have internalized the rules and limits that their parents have taught them about their behavior, how to relate to others, schedules and permissions.
Is absolute control really necessary?
Nowadays technology makes it very easy for us to have absolute control of our children, to have a record of their conversations, images… Perhaps, resorting to this need for control may be justified in many fears that parents and protective adults have about various dangers that may lurk in children and adolescents or may also involve a great distrust in the child himself/herself.
It is important to promote the autonomy of minors, their moral development and maturity to assume the consequences of their actions, instead of only putting the control device:
Work on trust,
improve your affective communication,
explain to them the potential dangers they could face,
involve them in assuming and fulfilling commitments.
According to the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Law on the Legal Protection of Minors: Minors have the right to honor, personal and family privacy and self-image. This right also includes the inviolability of the family home and correspondence, as well as the secrecy of communications.
We all have an obligation to know the law, and minors should know that, although they have the right to privacy, this is achieved through trust and responsibility. They should also know that from the age of 14 they have criminal responsibility, which means that they have to assume the consequences and implications of their actions, not only before their parents, who are legally responsible for them, but in their case, they also have to be accountable before the justice system.
Where are the limits of control over minors?
A healthy adolescent wants to grow up, wants to have experiences, claims space and freedom, and this accompanied by a good formation of values, positive self-esteem and solid and strong personality, can not be bad. Overprotection creates great havoc in minors and multiplies and aggravates family conflicts.
Healthy fathers and mothers accompany their children in every stage of their lives, seeing them become people who are capable of facing their mistakes, their challenges and achieving their dreams. To do this, at some point, they should just take a step back, accompany, care, be attentive to signs of problems or overflow, advise and always be a good example.
If over-involved parents are in great distress, cannot allow this freedom and want to remain in control of their children, it would be good for them to rely on professionals who, like me, work with them to help them overcome this evolutionary slump or to psychologically assess these minors if necessary.