Quality Family Time

By: Nur Fitriyanti, 2201413174

Nowadays teenager’s conditions do not make sense. Many teenagers have known bad things such as cigarette, narcotic, and free sex since they are a child. The effect from that situation is there are so many crimes done by teenagers. For example, in Indonesia now about 15 percent of children below 15 years is a smoker, it is increasing to 17 percent per year. As a matter of fact, we can see how teenagers life with the electronic media surrounding them.

Why become like that? What happen with teenagers moral currently?

It is about how they use their gadget as electronic media to connect the internet and to communicate with other friends or other people around them, even in right ways or not. This situation often makes the teenagers lost of respect to each other. For example they just focus on their gadget almost all day long whether open social media such as facebook, twitter, BBM, instagram, path and so on or browsing in the internet. Even though they have “a real” friend on their side or in front of them and they do not care to them. They just keep their focus on the gadget and face eac other silently. It is happen in every sides around us. Moreover, with their family when they have dinner together, they are just busy with their gadget without saying anything to each other. Father is busy with his gadget to work, mother is busy with her gadget to shopping online, and their child is busy with his gadget to play game. It becomes a habit in their life and it is not good for their development in a social environment.

To face this problems we cannot fully blame the teenagers for doing all of the crime or negative activities in their daily life. Although they have passed their childhood, they are not mature enough to be called as an adult. According to Karen Appleyard theory about the relationship between child and parent has impact in child society in the future and from her research that an insecure attachment does not fate a child to failure.

 One of the causes why teenagers do criminal activities is family conditions. If there is no communication or good conversation between family members, it creates bad attitude in teenagers. According to psychoanalytic psychologists Sigmuend Freud “The previous experiences with parents extensively form us”. That is why the role of parents is very important in family. This is parent’s responsibility to keep their child not to doing negative activity. According Judith A. Myers-Walls she is an associate professor and Extension specialist in the Department of Child Development and Family Studies (CDFS) the manner of a child who is attached to their parents will also affect how he behave around other people without his parents. Children need caring and sensitive adults in their lives. Parents are usually the first people their children to learns how to trust. Parents and families are the most important people in children’s lives.

In this case, spending quality time with family become very important. when teenagers and parents spend time together, they can share their spectacular experience joyfully. They can spend the quality family time while eating meals together, cooking together, hoovering a house together, and watching movies together and so on. By doing this activity parents know their children problems intensively and give some advice to their children how to solve their problems or what they should do to face it. When the parents do things that child wants to do it also send a strong message of love between them. It is good for each member of family. Spending time together also make child more respectful to other people and good for their social relationship. Parent should take optimum time for family and do not just focus on the gadget, just focus on the family. Teenagers that have good time with their family do more useful activities than teenagers that do not have time to join together with their family.

Harmonious families know how to keep the balance to spend time together. Children learn something of their parents to bring balance to their lives when they see their parents setting aside time for what they value.