A thought about modern parenting
A combination of setting up Babies yesterday in a hopeless attempt to get ER to nap, a discussion of (not joking) AU Potterverse childcare, and dealing with kids led me to the conclusion that one of the reasons that information-age parenting is hard is that information-age life does not have a lot of useful things for three year olds to do.
I mean, if you're a hunter-gatherer you can have a three year old pull berries off a bush and put them in the basket, and so long as the kid stays in mostly the area they're busy and occupied and productively contributing.
Farms have no shortage of work to do, and some of that work can be broken down into similar 'sort the rocks out of this heap' or 'fill this bucket with stuff' small child tasks.
It gets more complicated when one gets increasingly trade-based, because of the increasing skill levels.
And now?
... ... so FM says to me yesterday, "Mama, how do you spell 'dot com'?"
And then I had to tease out from half-understood questions and half-understood answers whether she was trying to spell it or put in a URL....
I mean, if you're a hunter-gatherer you can have a three year old pull berries off a bush and put them in the basket, and so long as the kid stays in mostly the area they're busy and occupied and productively contributing.
Farms have no shortage of work to do, and some of that work can be broken down into similar 'sort the rocks out of this heap' or 'fill this bucket with stuff' small child tasks.
It gets more complicated when one gets increasingly trade-based, because of the increasing skill levels.
And now?
... ... so FM says to me yesterday, "Mama, how do you spell 'dot com'?"
And then I had to tease out from half-understood questions and half-understood answers whether she was trying to spell it or put in a URL....