Are our kids lucky?

“Dad, you are so silly!!!” said Juhi excitedly. As I turned around I saw her Dad chilling happily. 30 years in retrospect- if we had said that we would have got a stern look or firm toned message to respect elders. Times have changed and so have we. We have become the median generation.

As a median generation, we have adjusted to our parents’ whims and fancies while we were growing up; and now, we adhere to wishes of our kids instantly. Because we know how it felt when we were treated like that as kid, fewer kids and more parenting awareness and resources have led to this change.

We can find disparities in following instances:

• Attitude: For us, ‘Parents were best’ and always came first in priority. Most of our childhood went in following their rules.

Now, we advertise ‘Our kids are best’ and try to give them every possible activity to fulfil their desires.

• Friendships: Earlier, parents’ friendships developed first and then we mingled with their friends’ kids and then, we became family friends.

Now, kids become friends first and when they get comfortable with kids, the families catch up as friends.

• Food delicacies: In olden days, whatever our mums cooked was as per occasion or/and availability of ingredients. Our choices hardly mattered

In present era, we prepare food to suit taste buds of our kids. We experiment with different cuisines at home many times.

• Places: We as kids visited many religious shrines and historical places with our parents. Many a times we didn’t enjoy those trips.

Today, we choose child friendly destinations like theme parks, amusement parks, etc. We book many child friendly events during their holidays in advance, so that they can have all the fun.

• TV programmes: As kids, we used to wait for Sundays as ‘cartoons’ would be telecasted on that day. It was only day when ‘our types’ of programmes were shown. On other days, we had to watch adult themed serials.

Kids nowadays, enjoy many (24*7) cartoon network channels. They have unlimited choices of programmes to watch. And we too accompany to watch them.:)

• Migration: There were housing societies for government officials and corporate people close to their workplaces. People used to migrate to live close to their jobs.

Many people now live near schools as it becomes convenient for kids and healthy choice as the kids can avoid traffic and pollution.

Just as we observed how times and our priorities in terms of kids have changed and the point to wonder is ‘OUR KIDS ARE LUCKY AND BLESSED, OR ARE THEY NOT?’

What do you think?