(I started to title this “parenting”–but I hate that word).
Two images have been sticking in my mind lately. This first one was at the optician’s office. A woman walked in with a 2-year-old in a stroller; sat down facing the stroller, reached into her bag, pulled out an iPad; placed it on the stroller and opened an app for the little girl to use. The entire exchange was silent, however.
The 2nd image is of a woman and a 4-5 year old at McDonalds. They were sitting side by side at the table; the woman never communicated with the little girl except once when the child was whining about something and then it was in a harsh tone. The women spent the rest of the 15 minutes I was watching them engrossed in her smartphone–it looked like she was playing some type of game based on her finger movements.
In both cases, I couldn’t help but ask myself if this is what taking care of a child means today? Minimal verbal exchange, heavy reliance on technology, little physical contact.
The 3rd piece of this puzzle is car seats. When my kids were little they sat in the front seat. We talked, we sang, we played silly word games. Even once they were bigger the car was the best place for conversation–especially when we were side by side. Now it seems to be a lot of DVDs in the back seat.
When my kids were little and we sat, my purse was more of a toy bag. We had books and games and always something to draw with–and, of course, at times we had to rely on my ingenuity to find something buried in the bottom of the bag…. I can’t help but wonder what the results of these interactions (or lack of interactions) will be. To stereotype–the woman in the stroller would probably have pulled out a book 20 years ago; the woman in McDonald’s would probably have ignored their child nonetheless. But how do we insure, in an era of increasingly social isolation in formerly social situations, that our children have the skills they need to interact with a face-to-face world?
If I am honest with myself, I would probably be using an iPad if I had little ones–but in a social way–conversationally, as it were. I have no answers–just brain wanderings this afternoon.
