Raising I.T. Experts

In Focus 'Raising IT Experts'

What happened to backyard frolicking, the BMX bandit, the friendly neighborhood street cricket game and screaming like an old fish wife out the door - “time for dinner!”?  It seems raising little people has somehow surpassed our primal natures and harshly subjected us to the need for an IT Degree to communicate with them. When your child informs you the need for an Ipad, Ipod, Iphone and everything else that starts with “I”, has become like air,  it’s time to review the costs!  A must have to survive in the world of social pressures and certainly in keeping your child from ticking off the Anti Social Nerd box, your only response may be - “there’s no “I” in team, you can share mine!” We'll miss the days of our kids screaming out in the night that they are sick, expect a text from here on in.  Our school newsletters are now fraught with ‘please ask your child to keep their phones turned off during school hours’.   They’re facebooking, twittering and blogging their way to world domination.  We don’t get marketing surveys spamming our inbox anymore (ok that’s good), but a little disturbing that global marketing companies now care what a 12 year old thinks! Glass half full, there are some really cool advantages.  Parking in the shopping centre has now become less of a navigational nightmare.  Yes those Alzheimer moments are a thing of the past as your little genius simply unleashes an ‘App’  they have downloaded on your phone, ‘Find My Car’ and  pinpoints your vehicle on level 3, Green Isle, Bay 37.  Wow, technological breadcrumbs! If you’ve ever wanted to spell the word ‘HEPATICO­CHOLANGIO­CHOLECYST­ENTERO­STOMIES’ (meaning - a surgical creation of a connection between the gall bladder and a hepatic duct and between the intestine and the gall bladder), oh come on, you might - have no fear, your IT prodigy will have soon Googled it and whipped it down in front of you before you can explain what it means.  If you’ve ever had the armpit sweating experience of assisting a child with Grade 6 homework, you will soon come to realise that Google is your friend too. So parents, while the phrases ‘get a job’ and ‘drive yourself’ or even ‘make your own dinner’ guarantees you a solid rabbit in the headlight stare from your little IT experts, we still know more than them, for now.