Tis' The Season

It is Christmas Shopping Season (cue the fake cheering) and that means many of you will be going shopping for your kids' holiday gifts. Undoubtedly, you have an idea of what you will be purchasing for your child, but I am here to save you. That's right- I am here to save you (cue superman theme song) from your possible gift purchase. Having substituted a few times at elementary schools, having many nieces and nephews of my own, and generally understanding kids from my time coaching them, I understand that the wave of today for kids is technology. They want the iPads, they want the iPhones, and the iTouches. Basically, whatever the late great Steve Jobs concocted, the kids want. I am here to tell you to resist the requests of those sweet cherub faces and do not make this a very Apple Christmas.

Now let me start by saying this- I am not anti-technology or against Apple or any other tech product. I have my own iPhone that I am texting with right now, while I type away at my Apple MacBook computer that has three different tabs open to check sports, news, and entertainment. My brain is about to shutdown from sensory overload, but that is the world we live in--we are able to stay connected, to a fault, and have our every need or whim met in a nanosecond. I guess the question you are asking yourself is this- Why are you seemingly railing against products, that you use regularly, as a terrible Christmas present? Glad you asked that and the answer is simple- I grew up without them.

The streets today are like ghost towns for kids. I drive up and down neighborhood streets and I rarely see kids playing in the front yards or at the parks. If I do see kids, it's usually with an iphone in one hand as they ignore their friend who is playing a game on their iPad. There is no bike riding, football throwing, or games of tag anymore. Those times have been replaced by kids sitting in their rooms listening to music, watching a youtube video, and chatting with their friends online in coded language. Kids don't even speak to one another anymore unless it's at school and even then they talk about the links they sent to one another the previous night. The social activities of playing and hanging out at a friend's house has now been replaced by a click of a button.

I can't believe I am saying this but- When I was growing up you had to drag us in from outside for dinner. We actually would ask for more time to play with one another and the parent would begrudgingly give the allotted time of five more minutes. The summers were the best because we could play until the sun went down and those hours felt like forever, like the sun might never set on our time outside to play or ride bikes, or play baseball. All of that has now been replaced by the sweeping evolution of technology that places everything at our fingertips. Kids look around at the adults, at their friends, at everyone else that is buried in their computer or holding a phone to text, and that is all they know. I feel as if they are being robbed of a childhood spent inside staring at a screen because that was what they were given for Christmas- The newest version of a babysitter.

I want to apologize to the boy scouts right now. Growing up I thought that being a boy scout was very dorky and I made fun of you guys a lot. Now I envy the kids that are learning how to do the various activities of hiking, camping, and building a fire. The key to being a boy scout is becoming self-reliant. Teaching independence to a kid- Wow, what a noble idea. They also work together as a group, not to share a computer screen or a double prong so multiple people can listen to music, but in outdoor activities where they gain friendships, exercise, and learn how to do a variety of basic skills in case, you know, the iPad dies and you may have to do something yourself. If there ever is an apocalypse and technology is destroyed, we all will be looking to the boy scouts to lead us into the future to survive. Who else will know how to make a fire without youtube providing a video? Just the Boy Scouts.

We are becoming a society that is becoming more and more dependent on technology to guide us and help us in just about every avenue of our lives. We no longer work by trial and error or just a sheer will to do it ourselves because our culture has become one that relies on technology to do the heavy and quick lifting. And who sees that more than anybody else? The new generation of kids that are asking for the newest gadgets this Christmas so they too can be fully connected like the culture they live in. No longer do they know how to write letters (unless it's an email), or find books at the library (it's all online), or figure out directions, (they have google maps!), because it is all just given to them.

This Christmas give your child the gift of independence and buy him a bike, a scooter, or a skateboard. Oh, they have that. Well, how about buying them a model airplane, a train station, or buying material to build a ramp for an electronic car. How about you give them the gift of going camping or on a road trip to ski or have family time in a new and fun location? And I know this last one is crazy, but how about giving them a book? Let them read and work with their own imagination or ideas as they explore a whole new world that is not digital or exists in some mythical cloud in the sky (the concept of which I have yet to grasp).

The tech world is growing fast and it is causing all of us to participate in a race in which the speed is too fast paced for us. We are continually playing catch up in our worlds to stay afloat of new Facebook statuses, new device updates, what can be watched on Netflix, and what is "trending." So how about we slow down our world and go at our own pace. A pace where our kids see that they don't always have to be digitally connected or scared to go outside and play and maybe miss an online chat or a youtube clip with their friends. Kids will always be able to watch or catch up on their iPad, iPhone, tablet, or whatever gadget they choose to use, but their childhood days are as long as those summer nights, when the sun seems hesitant to give way to the moon. Yet it does and those days that felt like they would never end eventually fade away forever. So this Christmas give your kid the best gift imaginable. Their Childhood.