Teaching children on how to deal with natural death
I've read at Slashdot that two teenagers have commited murder after playing Grand Theft Auto. This obviously led to the discussion, "aren't our children being exposed to too much violence in videogames - movies - etc."?
My opinion in this matter is that yes - in a way. The real problem is that our children (and I can say 'our', as I'm a parent of a 2 years old boy) are being raised too far from reality. In our own legitimate concern about their safety, we seek to protect children from what we call 'the dangers of the world'. But as a side effect, I think that we end up hiding too much. I'll explain it a little bit better.
I think that kids today have little experience with natural death. When I listen stories told by my parents (and more effectively, my grandparents), they all have had some experiences of natural death of close relatives and friends while they were still young. It was something that happened, and people had to learn how to deal with it. Death was then regarded as natural (if sorrow) part of life. People would sometimes revolt at God's will (as they still do today), but it the end, most people would learn how to mourn the dead; how to respect them, and how to respect the family; and above all, how to keep living with a sense of the
fragility of life.
The advances in health and sanitary conditions has changed this situation a lot. In developed countries, natural death is not nearly as common as it was a few decades ago. On the other hand, today's kids do have some experience - from news, or first hand - with violent death. Dealing with violent death is much more difficult than dealing with natural death. Some of the reactions include the desire to revenge, or the revolt against 'the system'; both can be manifested in several ways, most of them disturbing.
Anyway, the fact is that kids now have little or no experience with natural death. On the other hand, they have some experience - direct or indirect - with violence. In this sense, violent games, movies and news shows are only part of the problem. Kids don't have a correct perspective of life, and can't understand exactly what does death means. They have lost something fundamental: the sense of the
importance of life. If life has no meaning, what does death means? That's help to explain, at least in part, this casual approach to life - and death.
P.S. I've reread, and revised, this post on July, 2004; it is now something much more important to me, as I have lost my father three months ago, after a long battle against cancer. My son is now 3, and he's struggling to deal with the fact that grandpa has died. I think that, while hard for us all, he'll learn something valuable for his life, despite his age. I hope he'll be able to understand what life and death mean in a healthy way, without any trauma.
Well. That's not my first blog attempt; in fact, I have started another blog, where I've posted only a couple of entries. So that's just another try - I hope it will be a better one (or at least a little bit more succesful).
