My Surreal Reality..

Nature Deficit Disorder, or children of the evolution?

We always find someone to blame, is it the parents? The teachers? The education system? Modern technology? Sony, Samsung, Siemens et al?

Instead of placing multi-directional blame, perhaps we should find a solution to the misadventure that we see making a calamity out of our children’s health?

My computer devoted, eight year old brother and I head over to the playing field, I make a pass to him with my old, but functional brown leather football, it rolls stopping a good inch from his right foot.  For a second I believe that he isn’t going to reciprocate, I despair, but then, he smiles brightly, moves with haste and kicks the ball into the air above him and heads it before making a run (yes, run) away from me, teasing with his skills as he goes. It’s May, weekend, a feast of sweet smells and delectable colours, the forsythia, the first yellow trumpet-fanfare flower of spring, has subsided into leggy green.  My brother is playing out.

It has been scientifically proven that children have evolved ‘gaming thumbs’, one might say that this is a combination of nature (the evolutionism) and nurture (our technological climate), so why not understand and then implement rules for our children as such. For my entertainment, I have recycled three rather conclusive words: EVERYTHING IN MODERATION!

What I don’t understand is why is there no seething, indignant, irked, and across the board absolutely FUMING reaction from parents that, as always, a generalised label has been placed on their children.

Any parent can see that giving time to their children in encouraging the outdoors will bless them down the line. That time should be allocated. However, labelling and restricting what has become modern age entertainment is rather like taking a gramophone and vinyl from a 60’s child. Who are we to judge? What an acrimonious indignity!