Dr. Reyaz Ahmad
Someone once rightly said, “It takes a community to raise a child.”
For generations, that community was visible and close at hand. It included grandparents, relatives, neighbours, teachers, elders and family friends. Children grew up surrounded by adults who corrected them, encouraged them, protected them and, when necessary, disciplined them. Parents rarely carried the entire burden alone.
Today, the community still exists—but much of it has moved online.
A new mother worried about her baby’s sleep, a father struggling to understand his teenager, parents anxious about screen addiction, school pressure, bullying, emotional health or changing social behaviour can now find thousands of articles, videos, blogs, podcasts and parenting groups within seconds.
This is undoubtedly an advantage. But it also creates a serious problem: modern parents are not suffering from a shortage of advice; they are suffering from an excess of it.
The real challenge is no longer simply how to raise a child. It is how to distinguish useful guidance from fashionable opinion, scientific evidence from social-media myths, and thoughtful parenting from fear-driven overreaction.
Parenting in the twenty-first century cannot be left entirely to instinct, tradition or internet trends. It requires learning, reflection and adaptability.
Parenting Begins Before the Child Can Speak
The parenting journey often begins long before a child enters school. Parents seek advice during pregnancy, childbirth, adoption and early childhood. Questions arise about nutrition, sleep, behaviour, attachment, discipline, language development and emotional growth.
Yet the biggest mistake parents often make is searching for a universal formula.
There is none.
Children differ in temperament, ability, sensitivity, personality and developmental pace. Families differ in culture, economic circumstances and social expectations. What works beautifully in one household may fail completely in another.
The objective, therefore, should not be to create a “perfect child.” It should be to create an emotionally secure environment in which a child can gradually develop responsibility, confidence, judgment and resilience.
Parenting is less about manufacturing obedience and more about preparing a human being for life.
We Often Punish Behaviour Without Understanding Its Cause
This is particularly important during the early years.
When a toddler cries, screams, refuses food or throws a tantrum, adults often describe the child as stubborn or badly behaved.
But children frequently communicate through behaviour before they can explain themselves through language.
A child may be tired, frightened, overstimulated, hungry, frustrated or simply unable to regulate an unfamiliar emotion.
This does not mean that parents should abandon discipline. Children need boundaries. But discipline without understanding can easily become punishment, while understanding without boundaries can turn into indulgence.
Healthy parenting lies somewhere between these extremes.
Before reacting, parents should ask a simple question:
Why is my child behaving this way?
That question changes parenting from reaction to understanding.
Teenagers Do Not Need Police Officers at Home
The challenge becomes more complicated during adolescence.
Teenagers live in a world their parents never experienced at the same age. Their friendships may exist partly online. Their failures can become public within minutes. Their social comparisons are continuous. They are exposed to influencers, unrealistic lifestyles, online hostility, academic competition and rapidly changing expectations about careers and identity.
In response, some parents tighten control.
They monitor every friendship, question every decision and respond to mistakes with lectures, threats or humiliation.
The intention may be protection, but excessive control often produces secrecy.
A teenager who believes that every confession will lead to punishment eventually stops confessing.
This is one of the greatest dangers in family relationships.
Parents must remain parents, not merely friends. Rules are necessary. Accountability matters. But authority is most effective when accompanied by trust.
The aim should not be to know every detail of a teenager’s life. It should be to build such a relationship that the teenager voluntarily returns to the parent when facing a difficult decision.
That is far more powerful than surveillance.
Parenting Styles Matter
There are many ways to raise children, but not all produce the same emotional environment.
Some parents are authoritarian: rules are strict, questioning is discouraged and obedience is expected.
Others are permissive: affection is abundant but boundaries are weak.
Some become emotionally distant and leave children to largely manage themselves.
A healthier approach is often one that combines warmth with structure—clear expectations, consistent consequences, emotional availability and age-appropriate independence.
Children need freedom, but freedom without responsibility does not prepare them for adulthood.
They need discipline, but discipline without affection may produce fear rather than character.
The strongest parenting combines both.
The Internet Has Created a New Generation of Parenting Myths
One of the most important roles of modern parenting education should be to separate facts from myths.
Consider some of the statements frequently repeated:
“Strict parents produce successful children.”
“Good parents never lose patience.”
“A child who gets excellent marks will automatically succeed in life.”
“Technology is destroying every child.”
“Parents must sacrifice everything for their children.”
None of these statements is universally true.
Successful adulthood depends on much more than grades. It requires resilience, communication, problem-solving, emotional regulation, ethics and the ability to recover from failure.
Technology is not automatically harmful either. The real questions are what children are watching, how long they are using devices, whether technology is replacing sleep, exercise and relationships, and whether parents themselves are modelling responsible behaviour.
Parents cannot reasonably demand that children put away their phones while adults remain permanently absorbed in screens.
Children study our behaviour more carefully than they listen to our instructions.
We Must Stop Pretending That Good Parents Never Struggle
Another damaging myth is that good parenting always looks calm and confident.
It does not.
Parents become exhausted. They worry about finances, education and their children’s future. They lose patience. They compare themselves with other families. They make mistakes.
Social media makes this worse by constantly presenting carefully edited images of successful children, perfect homes and smiling families.
But parenting is not a competition in public appearance.
A child needs emotionally available parents more than socially impressive parents.
This means parental well-being matters too. A chronically exhausted, anxious or emotionally overwhelmed parent cannot consistently provide the patience and stability children need.
Taking care of one’s own physical and emotional health is therefore not selfish. It is part of responsible parenting.
Good Parenting Advice Must Answer Three Questions
The internet contains endless instructions: communicate more, reduce screen time, discipline consistently, support your child, build confidence.
But advice becomes useful only when it answers three questions:
Why? How? What should I actually do?
“Communicate with your teenager” is a slogan.
Explaining how to start a difficult conversation, what language to avoid, how to listen without interrupting and what to do when the teenager refuses to speak—that is guidance.
“Reduce screen time” is easy advice.
Introducing device-free meals, keeping phones outside bedrooms at night, discussing online safety and setting family-wide digital rules—that is practical parenting.
Good parenting education should therefore move beyond moralising.
It should provide tools.
Parents Must Learn the World Their Children Live In
One of the most dangerous sentences in parenting is:
“This is how my parents raised me, and I turned out fine.”
Some traditional values remain timeless—honesty, respect, discipline, compassion, responsibility and hard work.
But the world has changed.
Artificial intelligence, social media, online learning, gaming, digital relationships and new forms of employment are reshaping childhood and adulthood.
Parents cannot guide children effectively if they refuse to understand the environment in which those children are growing up.
This does not mean blindly accepting every trend.
It means becoming curious enough to understand before condemning.
Sometimes, instead of telling a child, “This is useless,” a parent could ask, “Explain to me why this matters to you.”
That single question may open a door that criticism would close.
The New Community Must Become More Responsible
Because so many parents now depend on online guidance, parenting bloggers, websites, educators and social-media creators also carry responsibility.
Their goal should not be merely gaining followers.
They should raise awareness, challenge myths, explain child development, encourage healthy communication and offer realistic solutions.
Parenting content should ask why, show how and tell parents what they can actually do.
Above all, it should remind parents that uncertainty is normal and learning is continuous.
The old proverb remains correct: it still takes a community to raise a child.
The difference is that today the community includes both the people living around us and the voices reaching us through our screens.
But technology must support parenting, not replace human connection.
No website can substitute for a parent who listens.
No parenting blog can replace affection.
No online expert can build trust on behalf of a mother or father.
In the end, successful parenting is not measured by how obedient children are while parents are watching.
It is measured by the kind of decisions children make when no one is watching.
That is the real purpose of parenting: not to control children forever, but to prepare them to live wisely, responsibly and compassionately when they finally stand on their own.
Author Can be mailed At reyaz56@gmail.com
