{"id":38941,"date":"2024-10-17T23:46:57","date_gmt":"2024-10-18T06:46:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/?p=38941"},"modified":"2024-10-17T23:46:57","modified_gmt":"2024-10-18T06:46:57","slug":"a-bubble-off-plumb-raising-a-hikikomori","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/a-bubble-off-plumb-raising-a-hikikomori\/","title":{"rendered":"A Bubble off Plumb…Raising a Hikikomori."},"content":{"rendered":"

This book was hard to read. It was a dagger in my heart as a mom of 3 teenage boys.\u00a0 What Jonathan Haidt wrote in his book The Anxious Generation<\/em> was not surprising or new information for me.\u00a0 I believe my husband and I have been struggling with this addiction to screen time since our boys were little.\u00a0 I am an anxious parent, and I am fully aware of how that is passed down to the generation I\u2019m raising.\u00a0 I want to explain my problem with this book and maybe talk about how screens helped us.\u00a0 I won\u2019t say Jonathan Haidt is wrong, but I am also grateful for screens.<\/p>\n

Cause<\/p>\n

When speaking about my family, I call us \u201cA bubble off plumb.\u201d\u00a0 For those of you who are unaware of a level tool used in home improvement, there is a bubble right in the middle to show when you are even level.\u00a0 So I call us a bubble off plumb (center level line) because we look pretty \u201cnormal.\u201d Still, we are, in actuality, slightly \u201coff.\u201d\u00a0 My kids have given me a run for my figuratively and literally money regarding parenting.\u00a0 My oldest is on the Autism Spectrum, with moderate severity.\u00a0 My second son had epilepsy the first year of his life (now no longer valid; he outgrew it), and my third son has been diagnosed with ADHD. I\u2019m tired and anxious; parenting has been earned for my husband and me.\u00a0 It\u2019s a lot.\u00a0 I know a lot of families who have it a lot worse, but we also have not had it easy.<\/p>\n

Having our first child on the Autism Spectrum has challenged all we set out to do as parents, which included \u201cno screens.\u201d\u00a0 Our son poured all of his attention into watching Thomas the Tank Engine<\/em>.\u00a0 He memorized all of the trains by age two and started using phrases from the TV show in conversations appropriately. He is almost 18 and has an extensive Thomas the Tank Engine <\/em>collection.\u00a0 If we let our oldest watch screens to help him, it became harder and harder to parent with different rules with young toddlers.<\/p>\n

My son spends all his time in his room of his choice.\u00a0 He is not on social media, and he is not gaming, but he is surrounded by his screens and the stories he loves. \u201cStories teach us about who we are, so the more storytelling there is, the more we feel we have a place in the world.\u201d[1]<\/a> \u00a0The stories of Thomas the Tank Engine<\/em>saved him, but is he at risk of becoming a hikikomori? \u201cBoys are at greater risk than girls of \u201cfailure to launch.\u201d\u00a0 They are likelier to become young adults who are \u2018Not in Education, Employment or Training.\u2019\u00a0 Some Japanese men developed an extreme form of lifelong withdrawal to their bedrooms; they are called hikikomori.<\/em>\u201d [2]<\/a><\/p>\n

Autism is a wicked problem.\u00a0 Many want to cure Autism, and many don\u2019t.\u00a0 Even that is a wicked problem.\u00a0 \u201cThe first case of Autism appeared in the U.S. in 1943. Before then, it was completely unknown. Somehow, by 2009, it was a worldwide problem, with one and a half million recognized cases in the United States alone. Something has to be causing this!\u201d [3]<\/a>\u00a0 So many books on Autism and research on the causes of autism have been explored, such as emotionally frozen mothers, vaccines, toxins, and genetics.\u00a0 I suppose the truth is all in there, making it a wicked problem. \u201c As there is no single cause for a wicked problem, there is no finite set of possible solutions. In other words, attempting to solve a wicked problem can never be exhausted.\u201d [4]<\/a><\/p>\n

Conclusion<\/p>\n

I\u2019m anxious. I don\u2019t know how to escape that, but I feel justified. I have it for a reason. I don\u2019t fear the past but feel anxious about my boy\u2019s future. \u201cThe DSM-5-TR defines fear as \u2018the emotional response to real or perceived threat, whereas anxiety is anticipation of future threat\u2019.\u201d [5]<\/a>\u00a0 Haidt states, \u201cThe cure for such parental anxiety is exposure.\u201d [6]<\/a>\u00a0 As I read the chapter on boys ages 13-18 and the chapter on what Parents can do now, I am grateful that he gave fundamental ideas on changing the trajectory of anxious parenting.<\/p>\n

\u201cSeven suggestions for parents to reduce overprotection in the real world and encourage more productive off-base adventures.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Practice letting your kids out of your sight without them having a way to reach you.<\/li>\n
  2. Encourage sleepovers, and don\u2019t micromanage them.<\/li>\n
  3. Encourage walking to school in a group.<\/li>\n
  4. After school is for free play.<\/li>\n
  5. Go camping.<\/li>\n
  6. Find a sleepaway camp with no devices and safetyism.<\/li>\n
  7. Form child-friendly neighborhoods and playborhoods.\u201d[7]<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    We can manage a few of these, even if we have a hikikomori on our hands and we stay \u201ca bubble off of Plumb.\u201d\u00a0 I kind of like it there.<\/p>\n

    \n

    [1]<\/a> Poole, Eve. Robot Souls: Programming in Humanity. <\/em>(London, CRC Press, 2024)Pg. 104<\/p>\n

    [2]<\/a> Haidt, Jonathan. The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing and Epidemic of Mental Illness. <\/em>(New York, Penguin Press, 2024) Pg. 196<\/p>\n

    [3]<\/a> Silva, Louisa. Qigong Massage for your Child with Autism.<\/em> (London, Singing Dragon, 2011) Pg 116<\/p>\n

    [4]<\/a> Bentley, Joseph and Toth, Michael. Exploring Wicked Promblems: What They are and Why They are Important.<\/em> (Indiana, Archway Publishing, 2020) pg. 22.<\/p>\n

    [5]<\/a> Haidt, \u00a0Pg 26-27<\/p>\n

    [6]<\/a> Ibid, Pg. 275<\/p>\n

    [7]<\/a> Ibid, Pg. 272-274<\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    This book was hard to read. It was a dagger in my heart as a mom of 3 teenage boys.\u00a0 What Jonathan Haidt wrote in his book The Anxious Generation was not surprising or new information for me.\u00a0 I believe my husband and I have been struggling with this addiction to screen time since our […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":187,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[3311,2489,1214],"class_list":["post-38941","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-autism","tag-dlgp02","tag-haidt","cohort-dlgp02"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38941","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/187"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38941"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38941\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38944,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38941\/revisions\/38944"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38941"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38941"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38941"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}