Kids' Stuff

At times it seems that there is more stuff for kids than there are actually kids around. Where are kids these days anyway? At least, when I am out walking, I don’t see any. Mine are there, of course, busy making mud pies, getting stuck in trees, and ripping their pants.

My kids are wondering about their peers as well. There is school, of course, which keeps most kids pretty busy. But these days most children also have after school activities, at times so many that they require a personal assistant (mom) to keep track of them all.

But what about on weekends, Zoe wants to know and I give it my best effort by suggesting that maybe they are visiting their grandparents. "Well," Zoë ojects, "There are grandparents all around us…I still don’t see any children." And she has a point.

Truth is, the life of children has become much more guarded – by us, adults. Whether it is that we enroll them in extra curricular activities, study with them for their next math quiz, or take them shopping with us because leaving them at home alone would be illegal, their life has become our life.

And it’s not just parents’ lives. There are entire industries built just around children. Big money is being made by figuring out how we can keep them busy, healthy, and entertained…if not happy.

Happy, would be too easy – and usually doesn’t require much. As I said before, a bucket and a tree to climb is all it takes.

But no. Children today need to be challenged, especially when they have ambitious parents. They don’t need to run around the block playing catch, they need golf lessons, or compete for one or the other athletic competition.

Less then figuring out the ingredients to a juicy mud pie or how to built a durable fort out of sticks, they need Zoo Tycoon and Reader Rabbit. And as every parent alive in this day and age knows, true happiness only comes with a ninety minute feature presentation.

And so that’s where children are: Inside our worlds, glued to computers, consoles, TV screens, and game boys: Little hands holding tiny monitors, deftly manipulating sticks of the other kind, blank eyes staring, mouths agape.

DVDs, CD-ROMs and electronic toys strewn across the floor. All the latest blockbusters, they’ve got it, taken it, half digested, and, as it looks, regurgitated, heaved up onto the floor. Done. New stuff is needed lest blank eyes become demanding mad eyes.

And there is always more fun available for a few extra dollars – more fun so parents can provide the entertainment that will make their little ones raise at least on corner of their mouths a full eighth of an inch. What shall it be? An American Girl tea party? A new theme park? A birthday clown? What, what just what do you want, beloved child, to make me feel I am a good parent. I have so much to give, haven’t I?