I just realized something today, I’m losing technical relevancy with my kids.  Not in the way that they think of me as their dad, no… more along the lines of knowing what’s important in their lives!

I thought I would be able to cherry pick the best things from my childhood and let them share in those experiences that I deemed incredible.  Well, now I realize that what I thought was important is no longer relevant!  Time has moved on and my personal childhood joys are now obsolete.

I would like to say that kids are different today, but really they aren’t.  What different is technology and the way kids adapt to it and thrive! 

From an early age, kids are exposed to electronics… even at the infant stage!  They push a button on a bear and it growls, or its eyes light up, or it sings a song or whatever the new fancy is.  Next, it’s the portable gaming systems like the Nintendo DS, my kids (including my 6-year-old) take them everywhere!  Then it’s cell smart phones, like the Apple IPhone, that do everything except iron your clothes!  My son and daughter already plan on laptops, soon I’ll hear one of them ask for an Apple IPad for a Birthday or Christmas…  it’s just a matter of time.

Electronics and computer (and computing devices) are exposed to them constantly… and they soak it up like a sponge!   The stuff I had as a kid looks like a joke compared to what kids have these days!

Then there is the sports!  Kids need to start sports  when they are young because the competition is so fierce!  If you didn’t start your kids out in sports around the ages 5, 6 or 7…  it may be too late!  And the other parents involved; OMG, you would thing that sports were a matter of life and death.

Yes, it was different when I was a kid, the things back then now seem very slow and hokey to kids today.  Electronics and the internet have really changed the game with respect to kids. 

My poor parents can no longer understand what I do on the computer, let alone my kids.  My parents are truly of a different time, and watching them on a keyboard is like watching a fish out of water flop up and down in the grass.  The technical chasm between my parents and my kids is huge!

Readers, do you feel the same as my parents sometimes? 

I know that I’m personally trying my best to keep up…  I don’t want to become totally irrelevant with respect to technology!

-MR