As the new school year begins, families, churches and schools must move from awareness to action.
The back-to-school season is usually filled with lists—textbooks, uniforms, bus schedules. But there’s a more urgent list before us this year: the habits and guardrails that will protect our children’s minds, bodies, and hopes.
An ancient text describes “perilous times… lovers of self, proud, disobedient to parents… lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God” (2 Timothy 3:1–4). Whatever your creed, the description feels uncomfortably current. Our children are growing up amid powerful forces—some helpful, many not—that shape attention, sleep, community, and belief. Our vigilance is not optional; it is a necessary act of love for those we care about.
AN OLD STORY WITH A MODERN LESSON
In a little-remembered episode of Israel’s history (2 Kings 11), a corrupt regime moved to wipe out the royal heirs. Two adults—Jehosheba and the high priest Jehoiada—intervened to protect Joash from the murderous rage of Queen Athaliah as she sought to secure the throne for herself after her son, King Ahaziah, was killed by Jehu. They hid the child Joash, one of the heirs in waiting, “in the house of the Lord” for six years, preserving a destiny not many would see.
The point is not to merely import the ancient stories into modern life. It is to remember a fundamental civic duty: adults must at times step in—decisively—to protect children’s futures. That call is as relevant in Jamaica as it was in Jerusalem back then.
“Sometimes we have to get involved.” Protection requires action, not passivity.
TODAY’S THREATS DON’T WEAR CROWNS
The dangers our children face are less visible than Queen Athaliah’s soldiers but no less real.
- Online platforms and games. Spaces that promise creativity and community can also carry cyberbullying, inappropriate contact and manipulative designs that keep children online far longer than intended and entrap them in situations they should best avoid.
- Social media and device overuse. More screen time can mean fewer face-to-face friendships, reduced family conversation, sleep deprivation, and a drifting attention that make study, worship, and even service to their community feel distant.
- Anxious, sleepless children. Many parents report seeing their children awake well past midnight, then struggling through school—and yes, many times through church—exhausted.
This is not a call to panic or to demonise technology. It is a call to order and structure: clear standards, consistent boundaries, and a community that helps parents hold the line.
THE YOUTH AT THE WINDOW
There’s another ancient scene worth recalling (Acts 20:8–10). A young man named Eutychus—his name means “good fortune”—dozed off during a long sermon, fell from a third-storey window where he was sitting, and was thought dead. The apostle Paul rushed down, embraced him, and declared life over his corpse, miraculously bringing him back to life.
The image is striking: a youth present, yet drifting—physically in the room, but spiritually at the window. That is many of our young people today. The response we need is the same: reach them quickly, embrace firmly, and speak life over them as the apostle did.
WHAT FAMILIES, SCHOOLS, AND FAITH COMMUNITIES CAN DO NOW
1) Word first, phone second. Start the day with something that grounds the children—Scripture and prayer for some, a quiet reading or gratitude practice for others—before screens.
2) Digital sunsets. Establish a nightly device curfew and charge phones outside bedrooms. Children can’t afford to be fighting with algorithms at 1 a.m.
3) Phone-free zones. Make parts of home, school, and youth gatherings genuinely phone-free to safeguard attention and conversation. In this regard, the dinner table must be considered holy ground where no device should ever hope to tread, especially at meal times, but allowable when these devices are being used to complete schoolwork.
4) Delay the dopamine. Consider delaying smartphones and social media. Many families choose basic phones in early teens and then supervised access later.
5) Mentor Saturdays. Trade some screen hours for organised play, crafts, sport, service, or outdoor clubs. This is especially relevant in the emerging concrete jungles of Kingston, which are now littered with multiple apartment buildings, some without designated play areas.
It is in such circumstances that I advocate for out-days: community-led initiatives that involve timeless classics like dandy shandy and Chinese skipping, with NO DEVICES allowed. Real skills, real friends, real belonging.
6) Teach the “why”. Rules without meaning breed rebellion. Explain attention, sleep, privacy, responsibility, and reverence for God in age-appropriate ways.
BLESSING OUR CHILDREN—OUT LOUD
Whether you pray or not, words shape worlds. Many households in Jamaica will recognise and gladly speak these promises:
- “Here am I, and the children the Lord has given me; we are signs and wonders…” (Isaiah 8:18)
- “The mercy of the Lord is… to your children’s children.” (Psalm 103:17)
- “Their children will be mighty in the land.” (Psalm 112:2)
- “May the Lord increase you, you and your children.” (Psalm 115:14)
And this civic vow deserves to be said in every home and school: We will not bury any of our children. We will guard their sleep, their attention, their friendships, and their faith.
We will be the adults who show up.
A FINAL WORD
Protecting children is not the government’s job alone, nor the schools’, nor the churches’. It is all of ours, together.
If Jehosheba and Jehoiada could preserve a hidden future under threat, so can parents protect their children—by choosing presence over passivity, rest over anxiety, boundaries over distraction, and community over isolation.
As the new school term begins, let us ensure our children begin it awake, anchored, and seen.
And all thy children shall be taught of the LORD; and great shall be the peace of thy children. Isaiah 54:13
Gordon M. Swaby is an engineer by profession and a Kingdom visionary.