Before the Technology Era

Remember what it was like to have to remember phone numbers for your friends?

Remember when you misbehaved at the Market or anywhere else in public for that matter and mom would take you out to the car for a spanking; not her, idiot!

Remember when there were only maybe 50 channels to choose from on TV and only one or two were for kids?

Remember when kids didn't have cell phones? Shit, remember when no one had a cell phone?

I know you all loved that trip down memory lane; I was setting you up for a great article I found in Women's Day magazine. I'm not going to copy and paste the whole thing here due to copyright laws, but I highly recommend going to the link above and reading that article. It won't take you that long, maybe 7 minutes.

The article made me think about how I want to raise my kids. (No, I'm not KU yet, but one day I will be) On one hand, I don't want my children to live without, but like the article states, what harm can it do? And further from harm, it can even help them. I know I wouldn't have been so eager to go over seas in my twenties had I already been there with my parents.

I also thought about things J and I have done recently to save money in this economy. If we already had children, would they be perceptive to the cutbacks? Of course it depends on age, but then we get to the question, of what do you tell them?

When my sister and I were growing up, we didn't ask for things. I guess maybe you could say we were raised to not ask for things. We considered a gift from someone, even my parents, as special.

So, I leave you with a question: Do you agree with article? In hard times, do you keep giving the kids all they want, even private school, or do you cut back as a family? Why?


~Kate~