So another new year has whizzed by and we find ourselves knee deep in the first week of 2017. Even the children have been commenting on how quickly the time is passing! I think that when you’re an adult time seems to pass quickly because you’re always busy getting ready for the next event, getting the children to where they need to be and so on. The children on the other hand find time slower because they are waiting for the next thing to come up. As they have got older and taken on more responsibility time has of course ‘sped up’ for them and they are spending their time doing things rather than waiting for them!
That is of course unless they happen to have some sort of device in their hands, it could be a remote control, a phone, tablet or game controller but then time stands still. It has very strange physical effects, their hearing is restricted to just the game, app or programme. Their responses are limited to yes, no or some sort of undefined noise! It can lead to tantrums and nearly always results in one of shouting to get their attention or a fight between siblings as someone interfered, and caused them to lose a game or some such other related disaster.
I have come to realise that their childhood is vastly different to my own due to the technology available and with the rise of VR and immersion technology it may be possible for their children to completely switch off from reality! Pokemon has been a great example of this! Strange alien animals that appear at random intervals for you to catch. It has got the children out and about and they have been less bored and that does bode well but at the same time it begins to take over- the kids are desperate to find a particular pokemon and fight about where to go to catch the best ones! Gone are the times when curfew was when it got dark. When I was a kid I ‘d be out on my bike with my brother and our friends and we’d go to the park or ‘play our’ on the nearby green and come home when it was dark. We didn’t have phones or pagers and no one knew where we were sometimes but it didn’t occur to us to be worried about it.
Today I struggle to let the kids go out on their own, Hpops does now walk home and even though her school is roughly the same distance away as my school used to be when I was her age, I insist on a text if she is walking home. I can track her progress and with Imp getting ready to join her in senior school next year that means more worrying about safety and so on. Maybe it is another difference between being a child and an adult, when I was a child I was unaware of the possible danger I was in. The men waiting to carry unwary children off in their vans, the cars that could run us down at any moment and so on! Today I am well aware of all the problems that could assail my children and am desperate to keep them safe. Everywhere seems to hold peril and even with the technology now available seem to be convinced that something terrible will happen to them.
I am getting better, Hpops has proven that she can get herself from a to b and I think that what I have come to realise as an adult is that you can teach your children the right way to act, how to cross a road and so on but you cannot control other people and you cannot legislate for events -I think if anything 2016 has taught us that anything can happen, good and bad and unpredictable so take opportunities to do new things and get out and about. We have therefore been allowing the children to do more things on their own. Pixie seems to be in a rush to grow up despite me telling her that it isn’t as much fun as she thinks it is!
In terms of technology we have decided to live with it, we have given the children some rules, some jobs they must do at weekends and school holidays to ensure they they get fresh air, exercise and reading and so on done before they surrender themselves to the world of games and apps! Homework must be done, music practice completed and so on during term time! That is of course well and good until they need the devices to do their homework and with the growth of technology it is now possible for homework to be set and submitted via the schools’ virtual learning platform.’ Now I have to be on the ball – checking they are actually doing what they claim to be doing and not watching the next You tube video or playing minecraft.
SO for 2017 we have no ideals set, yes I want to write more, I want to teach more, I want to have quality time with the family but that hasn’t changed since forever. Maybe this year I will do it but that remains to be seen! I am not going to try and live up to an ideal created by society to be a certain size or weight I’l instead just be happy as I am. I will take the kids out and about and encourage them to try new things and of course the main thing is we’ll try to be happy!
