My youngest turns 6 next month. My eldest just turned 8. I haven’t hit double digits. I don’t have a preteen in the house. I have two loving, active, sweet children who need their parents, who can’t be left alone, and who are still kids in every sense of the word.
And yet, as I’m surrounded by friends and family continuing to have babies, I can’t help but note how much parenting has changed in what really isn’t a very long amount of time.
It’s been 6 years since I held a newborn in my arms that was mine. I spent a few nights in the hospital without a smartphone. That’s right new moms, I didn’t have Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook to share gorgeous, squishy pics of my baby or chat with someone during the evening.
When I would lie down at night with my toddler, I didn’t have my phone to listen to music, or read an article on.
When I left the house with the kids, if you were looking for me to meet up or stop in, you had to call me on my flip phone.
This was just the way it was. I feel like my kids were born just before the wave of the new technology. Sure, there were video monitors available, but few people had them (let alone an app that would link to it!).
I’m not writing this from a ‘back in my day…you kids don’t know how tough parenting was’ perspective, because, let’s be real, I hardly had my babies during the stone age. I had email, and internet, and frankly, I spent the first year when my son was so small, reading blogs and thinking about writing my own. I was connected, but in a completely different way; and much less immediately.
I joined Twitter just after my daughter was born. Social media opened up a whole new world after the birth of my second. And now, I can’t imagine how much more technology, support, and access to information there is if you are just having a baby.
What must it be like for our parents to watch us raise children with so much technology and assistance now? For our grandparents!? Times change, that’s just how it is. I won’t argue that there is a better way over another (thank goodness for some technology!) But this post is meant to be an observation. To note how quickly things change. I don’t think my kids are ancient, and yet, there’s always something new in the baby world to check out that amazes me.
I don’t know where this all leads, but I can’t help but wonder: How many shows could I have watched in 2006 if I had a PVR?
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