Taking The World On With A Smile!

I’ve lamented many times before in this space about the concerns I have, the effects all of our new-found technology is having on our youth. I worry about what our kids might be missing in the great outdoors when they’re all cooped up inside, flexing only their fingers in an up-down or side-to-side Wii motion. I worry that they are barely challenging their brains, while their little thumbs fly nimbly across the tiny keyboards of what used to be talking devices but are now mostly used to send text messages in an almost unrecognizable English language. I pine for my own childhood, remembering how much we did with so little, fearing our children are losing the know-how to “making fun”.

Will they even know what “eye to eye” means without thinking of Skype or “face to face” without thinking it is a reference to Facebook ten or even five years from now?

Because of my worries, I make a concerted effort to put my kids in situations and environments where they have to think for themselves and not let Google do it for them. To that end, my post is a little late this weekend as I’ve been busy watching my children have a great time in the great outdoors!

I suppose we could have fought the traffic and crowds and made our way to a Six Flags park only a few hundred miles away like so many other folks. After all, the forecast promised beautiful weather for us New Yorkers, this holiday weekend.

I chose to take them to our little patch of heaven Upstate, instead.

Six Flags eat your heart out! It turns out our 100% kid-made, Slip-n-Soapy-Slide provided hours and hours of wet fun-filled laughter, and entertainment and I am happy to report my worries have been replaced with faith. Faith in our kids. Great faith that kids will be kids during any era! Faith, that when removed from and relieved of, the technological pressures of text-ing, Facebook-ing and Skype-ing and left to their own devices, kids do in fact resort to using their imagination and creativity! Yes, I am happy to report it’s not gone at all.

It just lies in wait for an opportunity to burst onto the scene and show itself.

It was a wonderful Memorial Day Weekend filled with reading, puzzling, grilling and sliding! It was also a time to remember the great sacrifice of those men and women who have made the ultimate sacrifice that makes such a great weekend possible.

How was your Memorial Day Weekend and what did you do?

Photo Credits #1-5 Karen Szczuka Teich & http://www.takingtheworldonwithasmile.com All Rights Reserved.