Ok, this is going to be another SOC posting, so if you can’t handle that, I would advise you to get off this post now and move on to something else (like reloading the page about 50 times to see the pictures ;)). This post is also not meant in any way to discredit the amazing job that is done by all parents raising their children, and especially those that have to move to a new country to find the best for their family. To those courageous souls, I tip my hat. But now on with the post (one, that I have no idea about where it’s going to go or end).
One of the things that I noticed growing up is that the stories that my parents and the parents of many of my friends told of their childhood didn’t seem to make as much sense as they could have. Sure, they were once young, and they had friends that got them into trouble, but outside of family life, the stories never seemed to match up in any way that could be appreciated. I was told stories of getting up at 4 in the morning to cut feed for the cattle and then heading off to school. Granted, had I grown up on the farm, this would have been more applicable, but the only time that I had to get up for any sort of work before 7ish was to deliver papers at about 5. All this being said, there is a certain amount on analogy that can be drawn through work ethic and the sort.
Then this weekend, I was over at a friends and he had a Decepticon fridge magnet from the Transformers movie. It was certainly a trip down memory lane as we talked about the movie (I checked my DVD box later and I don’t have a magnet :() and pondered what stories we’d tell our children about the great cartoons of our day. Noticing at that time that our parents had always said “we never had even TV in the pind! (village)”. Then the next day, my nephew was over (he brought his parents as well) and I got to thinking about what stories that we will tell him that he might not get because there will be elements of his reality that just don’t exist. There were already “children of Nintendo”, ones that have never known a world without consoles like the NES when I was in school, and now the next big push of children are those of the Internet and cell phones. I’m sure it’s not going to be any different than in ages past, as parents will still be able to raise fine children, but with the increasing speed of innovation (granted they have been saying this forever as well), how much of what we have experienced growing up, will our children (granted, I’m just shy of 30 and without kids at this point) be able to relate to? What will the new universals be? Family? Sport? Work ethic?
This may turn out to be a non issue, but as with our geographic immigrant parents, will digital immigrant parents have the same issues with their children. We only have maybe another 5 years before the first wave of digital natives (children of Nintendo and the Walkman) start to having kids en mass (many have already start), so it will be interesting to see what this group is doing or thinking in ten years.
While not directly related, there is an interesting article by Ralph De La Cruz of the Sun Sentinal.
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