Do you believe that kids would rather have time with their parents than more stuff? I do, but not everybody seems to agree with me. I know parents who work overtime so that they’ll be able to be in a position to provide more stuff for their kids. I recently witnessed a couple of kids who became upset their their Mom had to go into work because she volunteered to take overtime. Her explanation was, “If you guys want nice stuff, then Mom has to work more to be able to give you stuff.” The kids’ response: “We would rather be able to spend time with you.” I think the comment went right over her head.

Kids want ‘time with parents, not gifts’:

Forget the expensive presents for the kids this Christmas and spend more time with them instead, a new guide to the festive season says.

British charity, The Children’s Society, is recommending parents this year put more effort into baking delicious treats, dressing up and making decorations with their kids to ensure a more memorable Christmas for the entire family.

The charity’s 16-page guide says children are more likely to value the memory of baking, a treasure hunt or finding “snowy footprints” from Santa than the toys under the tree.

Spokesman Tim Linehan said findings from the charity’s two-year investigation into modern British childhood had revealed that children want to spend more time with their parents.

“If you ask a child what they remember about Christmas they are far more likely to tell you about something funny that happened or something they did with their parents than a present,” he told The Times newspaper.

“We are not trying to write-off TV or computer games … but these are more solitary pursuits than the games of the past.”

The guide recommends 100 cheap and simple things for parents to do with their children, including dressing up as Santa and watching a family movie such as the classic It’s a Wonderful Life.

In a post on Get Rich Slowly, the book Unplug the Christmas Machine, a book about escaping the commercialism of Christmas, is excerpted and the authors list four things that they say that kids really want:

1. A relaxed and loving time with the family.
2. Realistic expectations about gifts.
3. An evenly paced holiday season.
4. Reliable family traditions.

I was unable to find the 16-page guide online at The Children’s Society website. It looks like you have to request a hardcopy.

Ironically, this organization also recently got an entry into the Guinness Book of World Records for the largest Christmas stocking. What would you do with the largest Christmas stocking? Fill it with more stuff? Dooah! :-)

Posted: December 30th, 2007 under Uncategorized.
Comments: 2

A business research firm reports an estimated $650 Billion lost in productivity due to information overload. An engineer at Intel who studies computer productivity estimates about 8 hours a week is lost because of information overload.

According to Steve Lohr, in a NYT Bits posting, “The information-overload toll is largely a byproduct of workers grappling with the growing tide of e-mail, instant messages, cellphone calls, wikis, blogs and the like.”

Email, instant messages, cellphone calls, wikis, blogs and the like. Wikis and blogs are a lot like Facebook, MySpace, YouTube. Kids use all of these same tools. So it is hard to imagine that they aren’t being affected in the same ways. Is information overload affecting their studies and lowering grades? Is it shaping them in negative ways?

Some suggest that kids are growing up in this multimedia world and are better multitaskers. What is a better multitasker? If multitasking is the goal, then I am sure that today’s kids are indeed better at doing more than one thing at once. But if the goal is higher productivity in learning and better grades, multitasking isn’t your friend.

Are moms and dads being affected by information overload? When Dad comes home with his bluetooth headset attached and he’s still talking to his business associate, is he being somewhat neglectful of his family? Is the mother sending a negative message to her kids when she has to interrupt reading to them on the couch because her crackberry just beckoned to her with it’s electronic chirp?

How does your family cope with information overload and the interference of all of the gadgets?

Posted: December 22nd, 2007 under Uncategorized.
Comments: 2

How much technology is “too much, too soon”?

Opinions on this vary so much and most parents make their decisions from the gut anyways, or they just leave it up to the kids to decide. If the kids like computers, video games and gadgets, they just let them have at it.

My friend Brett (Dadtalk) ponders this question as he notices that his kids don’t want to play with the “toy versions” of things. They much prefer the real things. I noticed this with my kids too, my daughter when she was 2 couldn’t leave our TV remove alone. So we bought her this flashy toy one. Instead of black and gray, it was bright red, blue, green, and yellow, and each button played fancy sounds and made the device flash. In no time she became bored with it and kept wanting the real TV remote again.

Like most parents, Brett spends a lot of time thinking about the welfare of his kids and what he can do for them now to prepare the for the real world. He wants them to have an edge in the real world. Who wouldn’t. And the tools of the real world contain computers, cell phones, PDAs. Brett comments:

“One day a computer will be the single most important tool in their lives.”

Hold that thought.

I met a neighbor at a soccer game once, and we chatted. I told him about the product that I was developing, ComputerTime, and how it would help parents limit the time that their kids would spend on the computer because some kids just can’t get off of them without a lot of effort on the part of their parents. His response was, “Oh! I don’t think I would want that on my computer. If I could get my kids to use it 24 hours a day, I would!” Huh? You want to raise a sedentary, greasy, anti-social, pasty-white, introverted nerd?

As somebody who has worked in the software development world, let me tell you what it’s about in a nutshell.

• Problem Solving
• Creativity
• Ability to Learn New Things
• Motivation
• Communication
• Listening
• Speaking
• Leadership
• Persistence
• Imagination
• Teamwork
• Designing Complex Systems
• Doing Computer Things (writing code, Googling, creating documents, email, etc)

The point is, that a job in the computer field can be lucrative, but if you put your kids on a computer for 24 hours a day, are they going to learn how to do all of those other things on the critical skill list above? And that list is about the same for any other career your kids might be interested in.

Kids need to learn those other skills and they’ll do by playing with other kids, getting involved in group activities, playing alone, reading, talking, helping Mom and Dad around the home, being left alone for a while with a problem with real objects in our real environment, walking the dog, helping cook dinner, building a dog house, helping fix the alternator on the car, and sure, using electronic devices once in a while.

I did all of these things growing up and I didn’t start using a computer until I was 15. And look where I am today! Steeped in technology, being successful, and yet always struggling to keep up with the constant change!

Think about this: Compare cell phones now to cell phones 10 years ago, or cell phones 20 years ago. Compare DOS to Windows 3.1 to Windows Vista. Compare Fidonet BBS, to AOL, to the World Wide Web 1995 to the World Wide Web 2007. Do you think anything your kids learn today, technology-wise is going to matter when they’re coming out of college in 20 years? The landscape will look quite different than it does today. I’m sure of that.

So what’s going to be the single most important tool in your kids lives? Their brains, properly equipped with a broad range of problem-solving and social skills!

So Brett, don’t worry too much about your kids falling behind in the technology curve. I think they’ll do great. Focus on the basics and raise wonderful, creative, well-rounded adults who can problem solve in a team environment and persist at things and be really fun to work with, and they will prosper. Those skills never become obsolete, and in a tech industry, they sometimes seem so hard to come by these days.

Posted: December 5th, 2007 under Uncategorized.
Comments: 2