So, you may have seen the movie..’Multiplicity’ several years ago….Very funny, I recommend it. Anyway it had to do with cloning and cloning of clones. Now, when you have children, we are kind of cloning all of the good and the bad parts of the parents.
Correct? Your children.
So when those little humans grow up and have children ..this next series becomes your grandchildren.
Still with me?
And then….that series of humans has children….which are now your GREAT grandchildren.
This is as far as I can go with this.
Now we have a copy of me spread over the next 3 generations. A somewhat scary thought. Isn’t it?
As was discussed in the movie, a copy of a copy of a copy often has some flaws.
The point that I want to make in this blurb is that my wife and I had dinner the other night with our granddaughter and my granddaughters two year old. I am on point looking for flaws in the design…
But, you know what? There weren’t any. Perfect little person …sweet…kind and alert to everything going on around her.
She loved my wife, but would not have anything to do with me, which showed me that she had good judgement. I wouldn’t have anything to do with me either if I had a choice, which I don’t.
Anyway, having children in this day and time is a scary proposition, isn’t it? Right now we have the virus going around, lots of stress on all sides. The rules are different than when I was a kid. In relationship to the rules given to kids of today, I suppose I am lucky to be alive. We rode bikes without helmets, went barefooted in the streets of Houston, Texas….drank water from garden hoses…ate stuff directly off of trees in our neighborhood and played in the streets after dark. We didn’t have seatbelts or car seats to hold us in place for any trips we made in the car. There was no childproofing of our house when I was a little kid. You stuck a fork into a light socket, you only did it once, that seemed to cure me and every other kid I knew.
I don’t know what the rules are for children these days. I don’t know if anyone does. How old do you have to be before you don’t need a car seat? If you wanted to spank your child (I don’t, but just asking) can you go to jail for doing so? What age should they get their own cell phone? Do they always need training wheels on their bikes? How long is a ‘timeout’ anyway? How old would you have to be to walk a few blocks to the grocery store by yourself?
I’m not trying to be sarcastic or cynical about the current issues surrounding children and parenting, I am just curious as to what parents of today find the most challenging. These are not normal times are they?
But I suppose I am dancing on the head of a pin as they say….all of these issues will work themselves out one way or another. The same as they did for me when I was a kid.
We only had 3 television channels and no remote control ..along with roll down windows in our car with no , zero, nada air conditioning in the Texas heat . My grandkids will be telling their kids something like:
“We actually had to drive our cars to get from one place to another.”
“You bought things using actual paper and metal objects they called coins.”
“No one could read out thoughts.”
“Food and meals were hand prepared in a place in the home called a ‘kitchen’”
“We could buy all the water we wanted.”
Wish I could be here to see it happen …or maybe not……