As a pediatrician, I greatly enjoyed my interaction with children and adolescents as they watched their passions intensify with age.
From learning to sit and walk as a baby, to later wanting to be a soccer player, dancer or gymnast. Already in adolescence, he wanted to learn everything from everyone, except his parents. He knows that the world is upside down and, like his friends, he thinks that must change soon.
Later, in high school or college, he realizes that he will not be able to change everything, but he will be able to change many things, and he does or will do it with the help of his dreamer friends.
I tell you this, Santa, because being able to witness in my patients this evolution of passions, interests and wills is becoming “rara avis.”
The sad new reality is that many children and adolescents are currently experiencing a new morbid condition: APATHY. Everything gives them “flo” they say.
Many find it uncomfortable even leaving their room and prefer not to attend meetings. If they could, they would only take online classes from their bed. They get a lot of anxiety if they stop seeing and interacting with a screen.
Any activity that does not come from a phone, tablet, television or game console bores them.
We know the list of adverse effects that the use of screens causes in babies, children and adolescents, but parents and schools continue to allow them to use them, claiming benefits that do not outweigh the harms.
If I explain all this to you, dear Santa, it is so that you understand why the only thing I ask of you for this Christmas is that you do not put any toy with a screen or that requires one to be played in your big red sack.
Give children the opportunity to grow by inventing their games and creating friendships outdoors.
Give them the opportunity to sit down and think about everything that we adults have not done well and to generate the purpose of building a better world, one in which they have had time to dream in the shade of a tree, waiting for someone from afar to shout to them that it is time to eat.
PS Bravo, Australia! You already gave the example.