Just a note

This is a post I put on a Mom's bulletin board in response to our children being forced to read in kindergarten and whether that is good or bad. The discussion took a turn to reflect on how are children are growing up differently than we did. I just liked what I wrote and thought I would also post it here for posperity.

I think in general and in all ways kids today are forced to grow up
faster than we did. When we were young our moms sent us outside to play
with the neighborhood kids- unsupervised. That just doesn't happen
today. We didn't have any electronics, no VCR's, DVD's, computers,
gameboys, ipods, leap frogs, etc. etc. We had to be creative with our
toys and talk for them, they didn't talk to us. There were no scheduled
play dates. The only kids who went to preschool were the ones whom both
parents worked and/or could afford it. Now if you don't go to
preschool, you're not going to college- according to the TV
commercials. What about the kid whose family just can't afford
preschool? Are they doomed to drop out of school?

It is a completely different world that our kids are growing up in. I
don't know if it's better or worse, but it is what it is. There is no
going back, unless you want to move to Alaska. But we live in the Bay
Area- one of the most technically advanced places in the country. They
are marketing cell phones to 6 year olds now. Geez, how did we ever
survive without that growing up? It's a crazy, super-fast paced world
we live in. So it's up to us as parents to slow down ourselves and
teach our little ones to enjoy smelling a flower, to make a puppet out
of a sock, to watch a worm crawl - and to enjoy reading a good book.