“Mooooom, I’m BORED!” – I heard that several times last summer. My answer was always, “go outside and play” and to that I got a million excuses – there’s nothing to do outside it’s too hot outside, my friends aren’t out right now, and on and on. Now, we don’t have a pool in our backyard, but we do have a nice swing set, and the kids have bikes, so clearly there are things to do. Plus, they all have imaginations – I know this because I’ve heard outrageous stories come from each and every one of them! That was last summer. Enter the LONG winter….
Winter started for us in early December and kept on giving. It was cold, brutally cold, and snowy, but not the fun play in the snow type of snow. Luckily for my three, they all got some sort of electronic to play with. We have Disney Infinity for the XBox, my daughter has a phone (now an iPad- she just got for her birthday) and one boy has a Nintendo DS, the other boy has a Nintendo 3DS. Is it my fault as a parent that they have these things? Sure – I may not have bought them but I did approve them all. They used these things pretty regularly throughout the winter. I was lenient with them because yes, this winter was cruel and I’m sometimes a softie.
Now that the weather is starting to shape up, I am having a difficult time getting them outside anyway, they are stuck to these techie devices. My daughter uses ooVoo to chat with her friends, the boys can’t stop playing Disney Infinity – none of them want to do anything else. Looking around at kids today in general, this seems to be the theme. Am I freaking out a bit too much or is this simply the age we now live in and the one they are growing up in? It’s definitely a concern for me. What do you think?
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