My Grandfather, whose been dead for nearly thirty years now, grew up before the automobile. Being a farmer and appreciating the benefit of the extra horsepower he eventually made peace with the internal combustion engine… but it was an uneasy alliance. He believed that the invention of the car made the destination more important than the journey.
I have a similar relationship with mobile phones. Im not a total Ludite… I do have one and I recognize that they can occasionally be very helpful, but I guess my issue is that what we have to say hasn’t kept pace with our ability to say it and… it seems to me that the mobile phone has made “keeping in touch” more important than thoughtful communication.
We continued down through the Cascades, across the Columbia River, and into Oregon. We drove down through central Oregon on US Route 197. Over the last several months we’ve been together almost 24 hours a day. But for some reason on this drive it REALLY became obvious to me that Carson and Wyatt… at the ripe old ages of twelve and thirteen respectively, are pretty much their own dudes. Meaning that our range with them is no longer A-Z… it’s more like A-E at best.
Our goals for them have always been to question everything (and they certainly do that… especially if it comes from us). To train them to use their minds as analytical tools and not just buckets to hold stuff. To be curious and to try to learn from diverging opinions. As they listened to and commented on the news… it was just so clear that they were both no longer parroting what they might have heard… they were now authoring their opinions. Very cool.
And that’s a game changer for us because we see the parenting gig as being all about recognizing the range. When you’re in A-Z country it’s a lot of work and it comes at you literally from every direction. It’s kind of like eating an ice cream cone on a really hot day. Anything can happen… it can drip from any side and you can’t really relax AND not get sticky. When you get the ice cream down near the cone… it’s far less random and you can spend more time enjoying it. But… you’ve still gotta keep your eye on the ball because the fails at this level may be fewer but they’re A LOT more permanent. Get careless and puncture the bottom of your cone for example… and the remainder of the experience is permanently altered.