Well, the trip to my friend's farm will be postponed a bit longer. We'd initially made soft plans for the 8th, but I have to cover a Saturday shift at work and so it will be pushed out longer. Hopefully the 15, but my sister's birthday is the 14th so there is a big chance that I'll be expected to go to her house that day for family celebrations for her. We'll see. There is a small chance that we'll do a two-fer and celebrate her birthday with a Mother's Day thing. That would be great--more time to schedule other weekend adventures.
This Saturday we're going to my other sister's home to celebrate her girls' birthdays (J turns 16 and M is 14). Their birthdays are 2 weeks apart so most of the time they suffer and celebrate it all together. This year all they want is money. Ugg. I hate giving money. It feels so impersonal. Plus I know the 14 year old will spend it on a freaking-expensive cell phone so she can continue to text 1000+ times a day to who knows who. (She's hijacked her mothers ever since hers dropped in the toilet.) I really don't like the lack of social graces in this newer generation and knowledge about how to interact with people in "real" time, face to face. (God, I sound old and out of touch.) They don't get to learn how to have a conversation, superficial or otherwise. At least that's my explanation as to why my nieces and nephews rarely attempt to converse with me when there's a family gathering or even just call on the phone and chat. Plus, I'm fearful of cyber bullying for my nieces. The 14 year old has been targeted a number of times on my*space and who knows what the subject of those texts are about. No good, most of the time, I bet. Or at least a good percentage of the time. Am I being pessimistic? Maybe. Or maybe the fact that I just saw a blurb on the Today show about a young girl who hanged herself due to mean kids bullying her with texts and what ever other cyber stuff is out there to potentially use to exploit and batter young innocents.
It all scares me so. Some kids can be so mean. What is it about the human race that allows such.....well....meanness?
We gotta connect more. Understand more. TALK more, instead of putting up a cyberwall and depersonalizing everyone out there.
Oops. Tangent.
Well, I hope to post soon on spending the day in a perfect place, playing and feeding little lambs. I want to go to an old-fashioned happy place.
3 comments:
I agree with you, I can't imagine what would happen if my daughter was bullied. I wouldn't want her to be targeted by anyone who may try to bully her. You are not alone. We all want a more peaceful place for our kids.
It's so terrifying to think that could be our own child...yes, kids can be REALLY mean! I just hope they know we are here for them if things get rough...and things are never so rough that you have to exit this world. Scary, scary, scary. Hope you get to the farm soon!
I'm sorry your trip has to be pushed back or postponed - hopefully you will get to relax and hang out with the baby animals soon though.
The other subject though...that's a tough one. I think that the world we grew up in as teens has changed so much as technology has advanced. My oldest will be 15 this summer, and it's difficult to set appropriate boundaries with all of the electronic media - be it laptops, cell phones, ipods, Wii, Nintendo DS - and who knows what is next. With N, having Aspergers complicates things more. For him though, I worry that he isn't developing the social skills for face-to-face communication, or even phone skills, because so much of his communication is done via text. But at the same time, the work world he is going to graduate into is going to be a different one than the environment I started out in as well...and maybe those skills he IS learning will be exactly what he needs to succeed in his work world. I don't know. It's hard to find that balance. I know also that he has a confidence in texting that he doesn't have in person. But we have also had, and will continue to have, a lot of talks about safety, privacy, and protecting yourself from online predators. It's a scary world where people can bully others without ever setting eyes on them.
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