Buy that baby a computer!

Is it harder to be a kid in 2007 than it was in 1987? Is it harder to parent a kid now than it was then?

An article out of the UK points out what may be a clue to why today’s children might be less likely to connect with life on important levels.

A long-term study conducted by the Institute of Education looked at the way modern-day British parents interacted with their children, and found it very common for the kids to be lavished with stuff … toys, books, computers, electronic activity boards, and on and on … but be getting very little in the way of personal attention.

(Why it takes a government-funded study to establish that kids need a lot of parental interaction is beyond me, but when there’s research money out there, someone has to use it, I suppose.)

Some suggest that the present-day atmosphere of guilt combined with affluence encourages parents to bombard kids with ‘educational’ toys … laptops for toddlers … DVDs, and the like, thinking that such things can actually teach the kids more than they could learn from a parent.

Mothers and fathers insecure in their parenting skills, but flush enough to keep children surrounded by the latest and the coolest in educational toys, can be forgiven for assuming that the hand-to-eye coordination that comes from playing computer games will serve their children as well in future years as an ability to make cookies.

This compulsion to get kids plugged in and online at an early age hits older parents with little kids hard. Being the generation that had to pull ourselves from pen and paper through 64K to bazillions of gigabytes, we’ve spent far too much energy being intimidated by the technology everyone born a bit later takes for granted, so we’re darned sure our kids live on the leading edge of technology.

But are we doing the right thing by making sure our kids keep up with everything new? Or is this just another way to spoil our children and get them used to spending hours on their own in front of the computer?

It’s certainly not like parents now get a lot of help or encouragement. To many it must feel that there’s criticism at every corner and that nothing they do is right.

Smacking kids is out of favor, so much so that some countries are legislating exactly what parents can and can’t do in the way of discipline.

At the same time, kids who are growing up on a steady diet of advertising and marketing aimed directly at them are demanding their own cell phones to take to kindergarten, and feeling well and truly put out if they don’t get them.

Is it harder to raise kids now than it was when my first lot was little? I’d have to say no …

… but I live on a little island in the middle of the back of beyond, with one TV channel, no fast food restaurants and not a single mall.

Yes, I cheated. I know. If I had to do this all over again in America I’d be having a much harder time.

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