ADD: I am astounded at the vitriol that this observational diary has produced. I wrote this because it was illumating to me, and I wanted to share that here. Also, it included ancillary observations of other families, children.
What intrigues me is this: what is/are the hooks that drove so many commenters to be so angry about my observations?
had a doctor appointment this past saturday. He was in then because he had to give a lecture at a university on friday and knew his patients were needing him. That's the kind of good Man he is.
Got there a little early. Waiting room was packed. Went out into the hallway to kill time.
A family came to see him, two kids, both under five years of age.
Mom and the two kids came back out in the hall. Mom proceeded to have the kid play: she had them run up and down the hallway, first normal running... Then, variations: feet wide apart; run walk; stiff-legged; hopping; lot of variations, and she would always demonstrate the odd requests. Of course, the kids worked hard at it, and there was a lot of laughing and being silly. Occasionally mom and I would exchange looks, and laugh!
It was fun to watch.
After some time, and lots of people coming and going, mostly going, I looked into the waiting room and saw a number of empty seats, so I went in and sat down. The kids' father was sitting there.
Out in the hall I could still hear mom and the kids playing their games.
After a time, mom and kids came laughingly into the waiting room and sat. Mom and I exchanged grins. The little girl gave me a shy look. Dad sat on one side of the room with his daughter, mom and son on the other, beside me.
Mom started a new game: mathmatics. How many hands in the room, making the kids look around and count the people and then multiple by the number of hands. Then, how many fingers? Always the kids were correct, and mom and dad laughed with them and congratulated them.
I didn't have the heart to impose and ask if thumbs counted as fingers.
BTW: the family was Chinese. Did that matter? You figure it out.
About then, the son talked about how one and one made a window. Dad and mom weren't sure what he meant. After some silliness, everyone understood how a 1 and a 1 with lines at top and bottom... made a window! Ah ha! Got it!
Our windows at home have four squares in them, the son said, because it has a line in the middle up and down. Oh, replied mom? Son and daughter were puzzled, knowing they needed to recognize something here.
Mom asked how many squares in the window. It took a bit before the kids realized the overall square was also countable. Laughter!
How many rectangles in that window? Huh? Oh yeah. The kids were grinning from ear to ear. Dad was laughing along with them.
Now, dad said, how many corners in that window? That really got the kids. They had to take time to think about that. Not for long. Again, mom and dad were laughing along with their kids as discovery happened.
Again I didn't impose to ask: are those inside or outside corners? Perhaps I should have, just to push the kids. But, I didnt' want to overstep mom and dad.
It was while they were all having such educational fun that I realized neither child had any kind of electronic gameboy or whatever it is called. Nothing at all. In fact, I found that I doubted they had any at home. Something about how dad and mom and their kids related.
I thought about the kids who walked through life with their heads down staring at a small electronic device in their hands and having no awareness or interaction with anything outside of their narrow, hypnotized focus.
These two kids here, with mom and dad and me in this waiting room, were living, enjoying life, learning, and especially learning from dad and mom. I found that I knew I was looking at two future leaders. Leaders of whatever field they entered.
Then I thought of all those other kids with their narrow, truncated little lives focused on a tiny screen and sadly living vicariously through it. Had any of them ever watched a sunset? Held a leaf in hand and really looked at it? Did much of anything outside that tiny box?
Did these two kids here play outside? Use their imagination to create worlds, lives, events? To think for themselves? To analyze? Reason? use their wonderful imagination? I don't know, but I knew their minds were being activated, urged on, brought out, to see, REALLY SEE AND UNDERSTAND!!!
Whenever I see some kid staring down at a tiny electronic screen on some device held in hand, I want to grab that device and heave it out of sight! And tell this suppressed little being that there is a world vastly more entertaining, exciting, colorful... than anything in that device. Because that stupid device only holds someone else's imagination. Where is your imagination?!
But I also know that would require a truly momumental exercise of that child's imagination. Sadly, that imagination is already stunted, and well on its way to being just a block of stone sitting useless.
I find now that I am going to watch families, dads and moms and kids, and see the interactions, especially when those f---ing electronic devices are held in the kids' hands and they are utterly removed from reality, from the day-to-day discovery of the wonder and awe that surrounds us.
Escape pads? Sure.
BUT THERE IS NO ESCAPE.
We are here. Now. On this planet. What do we do? Me. You. Those kids. Mom and dad.