Do these tasks consume your life? They do mine. And I don’t like it.
My children say, “Mom, I want the super-duper-bleeper-blopper cause it does this and that and this and that and then it does that and this!”
And I say, “Does it clean itself? Does it dust itself? Does it upgrade itself? Does it come with all accessories for free? If the answer is no, you don’t want it.”
It seems to me one of the biggest challenges of parenting these days is teaching our children about time management by teaching them what not to spend their (our) money on so it doesn’t (by default) steal their time.
In other words, don’t buy it if you can’t maintain it. Don’t buy the printer if you can’t buy the toner on a regular basis. Oh, and the paper. Likewise, I must tell myself not to buy the book if I don’t have the time to dust the shelf that it sits on. Don’t buy the new ipod-esque thing if you don’t have time to upgrade and download and go into the cloud and realize the cloud is too small and upgrade the cloud and on and on and on. Don’t get the facebook account if…well, I won’t even open that can of worms.
You get my point. It seems to me…and I’d love to hear y’all weigh in on this…that we could increase our math scores, solve cultural ills, and find a cure for many-a-chronic illness if we’d spend more time thinking and less time upgrading. The guy that invented the software doesn’t upgrade his software. He’s got a guy for that.
I want my children to be doers, not upgraders.
This is a technological version of “Dad, can we get a dog?” And what is the proper parental response? “Well, you’d have to do all the feeding and walking. After all, son, a dog is a big responsibility.”
Perhaps we don’t treat these techno-dogs like responsibilities, but as necessities.
I don’t have an end to this. I’m a venting mom (who, if you check the weight loss marker today has upgraded her body to a lighter model. Now that’s the kind of updating I’m talkin’ about!!)
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