It’s often said by parents that their children want to grow up too quickly, but what’s behind the real desire in children to get past their childhood years and become an adult?
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It’s In The Genes
Many have theorised that there is a natural set of triggers laid out in our genetic structure which pushes children to adapt quickly to an adult world and emulate their parents and other adults. Certainly you can see examples all around us in the natural world of this, with young animals learning quickly how to feed, escape danger and find the best home, but in Humans this expansive learning is accelerated and morphed into even awareness of fashion trends, fitting into society and the ideas of right and wrong
Modern Advertising
Modern advertising techniques have been blamed for many changes in both adults and children over the years, for example the rampant advertising of cigarettes and tobacco in general (pushed by a strong Tobacco industry and even by Governments as these products are heavily taxed) promoted a whole generation of tobacco addicts which the non-smoking population are now paying for worldwide, especially in the UK, with a National Health system funded by taxpayers. It also seems that modern advertising in magazines, TV and cinema has been promoting the ‘perfect fashion’ as well, which apart from having an influence on adults also has an influence on children – after all children want to be just like their parents most of the time…
Is It Good For Children To Copy Adults?
In some ways it’s obviously bad for adult habits and trends to be copied – smoking is a good example of something we wouldn’t wish our children to emulate, but in other ways is it a bad thing for our children to want to do what we do? Fashion is probably one of the things we shouldn’t be too worried about. Brands such as Scotch R’Belle, a range of young girls clothing from Amsterdam based design house Scotch and Soda, offer miniature copies of adult clothing for young girls, with dresses, skirts and tops all featuring in the line-up. These ranges of clothing, as they just emulate the look of adult clothing, probably are an example of a good type of adult emulation, however we wouldn’t for example want our children swearing, being rude or acting in an obnoxious manner (things which some adults are very good at!)
Do We Need To Worry
As far as something like our children wanting fashionable, adult-like clothing no, but as any parent will know, children, especially when they get to that difficult early teen phase, are genetically programmed to think that they are superior, ‘ready for anything’ and in the experimental stage of life where they will try anything.
Removing temptation for things which are known to be damaging to adults (and therefore would be equally damaging to our children) would be one way to restrict information, but with the prevalance of the World Wide Web, any and all information is available at the fingertip anyway, so probably best if we just spend more time persuading our children that it’s probably not a good idea to grow up too fast!
I Dream Elephants offer a great range of adult-like clothing in the Scotch R’Belle and Scotch Shrunk ranges of designer clothing from Scotch and Soda.