“And they’ve got a real dragon too, I swear!”
Our nine-year-old son came back giddy from a play date at a friend’s house.
“You know what?” he said, overcome with excitement. “They’ve got a PlayStation, an Xbox, three iPods and four iPhones! And, and… they’ve got a huge TV.”
“Well,” my wife said, looking blankly at him as she searched for an answer. “Well, we do have a TV, you know.”
Our son looked at her even more blankly and said, “Yeah, but everybody’s got a TV.”
“Yeah, but it’s so much more fun when they hang, don’t you think?”
My youngest daughter is six and she is keen on school and even homework.
“I’ve got homework,” she says when getting home and throwing her backpack onto the kitchen table.
And so she sits and works out the math and the letters at least for a few minutes before making a break for it to the television or the playroom.
I don’t remember much about first grade, but my assessment of my daughter is that she’s doing just fine.
Or is she? [continue reading…]
“Think of all the time we’d have to play!”
After weeks of reporting on the possibility of Argentina defaulting on its debts yet again and the potential recession this would bring, I told my 11-year-old daughter what I thought.
“Argentina may just crash again,” I told her as we walked the dog.
This wasn’t really a conversation starter with a pre-teen, it was more a way for me to unwind and let off some steam after working all day as a journalist.
My daughter looked at me blankly and then suddenly her face brightened. [continue reading…]