APAD. Day 4. The New Age Kid

Spicy Saturday Picks: Jan 25, 2014

Ah the good life! After a chaotic morning, of kids not wanting to brush to taking forever to finish a cup of milk, to giving imagined reasons for avoiding school… to one kid in school and the other in bed, I am now in a relatively relaxed state of mind. So here goes.

The picture I am talking about today is no picture at all. It is in fact the sad reality of today. Of where today’s youth, the brighter generation is heading. Sadly, it is a common sight everywhere in urban and semi urban neighborhoods. Take a look.

Picture courtesy John Ragai via Flickr

Here is a kid, who is so completely engrossed in the gadget his parents gave him, so they can shop in peace. I won’t lie to you. I have to often snatch the iPad from my daughter’s hands and yell, really yell at her to go down and play like normal kids. But what is normal these days? Kids playing in the mud, or kids playing with their gadgets? Seriously, most kids haven’t even climbed a tree in all of their lives! Ask someone who was never at home till her parents threatened her with dire consequences! To me that is the most unfortunate thing in this world.

There is NOTHING in this world, let me tell you, nothing better than playing in puddles of mud. Splashing about and jumping wildly in rainwater. Playing in construction sand, trying to find pieces of china clay in it. We didn’t have the fancy “play dohs” back then. It was just this china clay that we had to work for. We really had to get our hands deep into the sand, and dig like dogs to get that elusive piece of china clay. And when we found a particularly large one, it was a proud “Eureka!” moment for us! All the afternoons we spent making little figurines from this treasure… And then going for a bath only to find sand stuck in crevices we didn’t know existed 😀

Ah… the good old days 🙂

I get it now. All those times when my parents told me, “You didn’t have half the fun we had as kids,” I know the meaning of that sentence when I say the same thing to my kids. They didn’t have any gadgets, not even television. Maybe life was even better back in those days. These days even we as parents are glued to the laptops, notebooks, and iPads. Why blame the kids?

Still, there is something unnatural about kids stuck to gadgets. You can see that in the image above. The kid has no idea he is being photographed. It reminds me of that day when I lost my cool over Saee. She was stuck to the iPad playing Temple Run. Deadly addictive game there. I said something to her, and then I repeated the same sentence thrice. Not a flutter of eyelids, not a hint of acknowledgement. It was like a rude awakening to me. Immediately I took the iPad from her hands and pulled her to her feet. I told her to go outside and play in the mud, get a little dirty, OR ELSE… (Thank God she didn’t ask, or else what?! :-P)

Two hours later my kid emerged looking like this…

©gauri kekre

That’s when I gasped, laughed really hard, and looked up to the heavens and said, “Hallelujah! The kid has become normal!”

Advertisement