I guess there is truth to the claim that we are constantly comparing ourselves to others and with social media, we do it more often and to our detriment. And this makes us anxious, edgy and obnoxious.
It's easy to blame the usual big time players: Instagram, Facebook, Twitter. They create the platforms and we get duped into taking part. I can agree with that.
Still, I myself enjoy checking in on other people. I don't compare -- practically everyone I know on those platforms is younger than me! What's there to compare?? -- but I do find joy in seeing other people do fun things with family and friends. It's the comments that are often silly (to put it mildly). My idea of a perfect world would be if we could keep all the platforms going, but would shut off all comments and possibilities of likes thumbs up and approbations that seem to cause people to spin in a never ending cycle of needing more of it. Don't you think that would be cool? (And no, you don't have to send me a comment telling me that it is a great/dumb idea!)
I thought about this today because, of course, with kids you always want to see a fine development of an independent thinker who has just the right amount of social awareness without being sucked into a people pleasing mentality that has her forever scrambling to fit in. And when I met up for breakfast with my daughter and her girl and the baby of the family...
... it seemed to me that somehow these young people are striking a good balance.
(Well, I don't know about Sandpiper: he seems awfully fixated on just pleasing Snowdrop!)
How so? Well, for example, Snowdrop and I were in the car, heading after breakfast to the farmhouse. We were talking about how great libraries are and how cool it is to always have a selection of new books to choose from. The girl said rather wistfully that she could read a lot of words now, but not all. To this I told her that I still had to ask about difficult words (at least the meaning of them) and she asked, surprised -- you have to ask? Don't you know about glossaries, gaga? From this we went onto languages and I reminded her that English was not my first language. Here, she demonstrated her own mind. I know I was learning French, she told me. But I decided to study Hawaiian instead. I'm already picking up a few words!
Hawaiian???
It is true that she has a great grandmother from the islands, but still, talk about learning a language that is not shared by many! (This was my reason for not teaching Polish to my kids: it's only spoken in Poland. You have to want to visit Poland a whole lot to benefit from knowing it.) Still, I very much see in the little one a determination to set her own path in life!
And that's a good thing, don't you think? (You don't have to answer that!)
