I keep hear­ing this often from adults who get nos­tal­gic about their child­hood, want to be a child again, and lament at the sup­posed “loss” of child­hood that today’s kids encounter. As an exam­ple, take this post from my Twit­ter friend Haroon Bijli. This post was inspired from a con­ver­sa­tion on Twit­ter with @Bijli and @LyricalMutiny.

Con­sider:

• I never expe­ri­enced in-house cat­tle like my par­ents did for unlim­ited milk-supply. Kids these days need to be taught where milk orig­i­nally comes from.
• Unlike my elder sib­lings, I did not learn swim­ming in a huge vil­lage well from elder cousins.
• When I grew up, there was no com­puter, no iPad. When my dad grew up, there was no calculator.

And so on. You get the pic­ture. Now:

• My kid will never get the expe­ri­ence of draw­ing water from a well in the village.
• My kid may never taste raw milk drawn from a buf­falo live in front of you.
• My kid will never know the joys of col­lect­ing Jun­gle Book stick­ers from under­neath soft-drink bot­tle caps.
• My kid who has tried fly­ing a kite will prob­a­bly have a kid in future who will prob­a­bly be fly­ing a remote-controlled UFO.

Point is, I did not have the child­hood my par­ents had. My kid won’t have the child­hood I had. Does this make any one child­hood bet­ter or worse than the other?

• My kid may one day lament about how her kid doesn’t have the child­hood she had.

One valid point was raised in the con­ver­sa­tion on Twit­ter, about kids becom­ing couch pota­toes. All kids seem to do these days is watch TV or play on iPads and do noth­ing else. No phys­i­cal activ­ity, whatsoever.

If that is the case, it is cer­tainly bad. But it’s not the kids’ fault. No kid is born to be a couch potato. One becomes a couch potato only by learn­ing from parents.

Are you actively engag­ing your kid in play­ing out­door games? Are you prac­tic­ing a musi­cal instru­ment along with your kid? Are you prac­tic­ing the dance steps your kid has learnt in school? And so on. Your kid will always do what you nor­mally do, as a way of life. If one’s way of life is a couch-potato, one’s kid will be the same.

Today’s kids will never do what you did as a child. You did not do the things your par­ents did when they were kids. Should we keep think­ing that our child­hood was some­how great and it is lost for­ever for future generations?

Aren’t we being myopic and self-centered? The world changes and so should we. Each and every child­hood is spe­cial. We’re just too grown up and inflex­i­ble to real­ize and adapt to change, which is a con­stant of nature and life in general.