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The Lost Adventures of Childhood: A Documentary Review
Answered

Four Important Things To Learn For Working With Children And Families

My Initial Reflection/Response Upon Viewing The Movie Is

Four Important Things i Learned From Watching This Movie That May Affect My Work With Children/Families

How Has This Movie Altered/Added To My Thinking About Childhood?

What Advice Might i Give To New Parents Now That i Have Watched This Movie?

Without any kind of virtual oversight of the government, or without any public outcry, the marketing industry of youth with multi –billion dollars in hand, have used the latest advances in neuroscience, psychology and anthropology in order to transform the American children into a profitable and one of the most powerful consumer demographics globally (Barbaro & Earp, 2008). According to me, this documentary is an eye opening concept that is useful for the philanthropists, well-wishers and parents of the children. The driving force of this documentary is the philosophy of ‘from cradle to grave’ and it is what that exists behind the cruel reality portrayed through the documentary. The documentary describes the evolution of the culture of consuming childhood from the year 1940s to the present time. The documentary makes it clear that it is only because of the purchasing influence, that the children’s market has the money. And because of this, marketers have created their own strategies but these corporate marketers promote unfair advertisements and intentionally make the parents miserable.

There are things that can be learnt from the documentary; first of all it depicts the way a child influences his/her parents to buy for them. And when these children ask for an object repeatedly, most of the time parents are seen to buy them the thing that they desire. Secondly, the objective of the new marketers is not only sell products alone, but they also aim to make them consumers for their lifelong period of time and parents do not sense this strategy. Thirdly, the marketing is not only about the products that it is selling but it is about the values that the particular product holds in order to look ‘cool’ in the society. The market takes advantage of the young consumers by showing them what their natural urge drives them to have and promote accordingly. Finally, the documentary highlights the facts that how parents think if they are unable to get their child a desired object; they feel like they have left their child behind.

Economy consumerism is playing a leading role in the whole wide world in today’s era of globalization. There is a definite negative impact that marketing and advertising imposes, especially is their target audience are children. Since children are so easily manipulated, the effort that is usually required for target customers in the age group of adult is way more than the effort that is required to target children. This documentary showed me an important facet of the whole concept of child consumerism; consumerism has been completely embraced by society and as it seems, children are born and raised with this exact same mindset. Moreover, once the kids are manipulated by the marketing strategies, it is them who influence their parents to buy the product.

Added/Altered My Thinking About Childhood

The documentary raised a question in my mind that whether or not parents have the ability to fight with the pressure that is exerted by advertising and whether or not parents will be able to raise their child away from the humdrums of this disease as talked in the documentary; the answer to both the question approached in negative tones. According to me, parents should limit their child’s exposure to the manipulation and try to communicate with them in order to help them and make them understand the affect that these forces have on them. It is not possible to protect the kids from the society but the parents can help their kids by making them understand that consumerism is not the only solution that can lead to happiness. Parents can establish an open communication with their kids to make this situation better.

The present day is increasingly witnessing what is popularly termed as “hyper parenting”. The documentary highlighted how children once played freely out in the streets, created their own world through games and went back home when it got dark (Harper, 2009). However, the present scenario shows a vast change; these days there is only supervised games, play dates and organized sports. All of this is happening due to the existing fear of the violence like abductions, school shootings and also the increase in the popularity of video games. All of this is making every child to stay indoors. However, this documentary has successfully shown the importance of free play and how it helps them to survive in the society. It is also revealed that what a huge change can be observed once the supervision is pulled away from a child’s play. The documentary raises an important question which states that there is inevitable difference between organised play and free play, but children of the modern days rarely know the perks of free play, so it might be a possibility that they do not know that they are missing a huge part of their childhood.

Nowadays, it is not good enough for the parents if their child is playing with a normal baseball bat and ball in a free space; they feel like their children are left behind and for this they put their kids in a certified team with a coach and make their children play under supervision. However, there is no fun in that. Due to this kind of hyper parenting, the children are not getting time and space play on their own and are not being able to be creative; they are always under supervision and under control. Free unstructured play is nature’s way of making kids learn about cooperation, and communication; free play make them creative and problem solvers, they learn about conflict resolution, they get to know their interpersonal skills, social skills;  and that is how children learn. If there are always parents there managing their interaction, they will never learn to do all these things themselves. The documentary showed that free play is directly linked with the development of character; it gives them the freedom to be as they truly are without the judgement of the adults.

When it was observed that in free environment, kids who were ignored and performed poorly in organized sports are actually outshining their own performance, the importance of free play for the children was understood. The kids were having fun, that they are not able to have under the supervision of adults. Even the leaders in the organized sports were seen to take more risks in the free play, which is not seen when they play under supervision. It is mainly because in that organized environment, if a single mistake is made by these kids, they are yelled at by the parents, coaches and audiences. As soon as a game is monitored, structured and kept under supervision, it does not remain a play anymore.  

Parents must realize that when they do not allow their child to have their own unstructured play, it is contributing to a major cause behind the epidemic of attention deficit disorder in the children. Deprivation from free play might lead the child towards anxiety, depression or might make them potential sociopaths and aggressive. Parents should encourage social play because it will help their child to learn about survival and how to behave with other by themselves; they must realize that play is nature’s way of making children learn about adaptability, about being nimble and these two factors are most important for survival. Moreover, 95% of the children do not have fun in an organized play, and organized play do not help these kids to have creative impulse.

References

Barbaro, A., & Earp, J. (2008). Consuming Kids: The Commercialization of Childhood [Video]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJtX0Xj77qw

Harper, S. (2009). Lost Adventures of Childhood [Video]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ehFBcuUr_Zs

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