As a parent, I find it a struggle to balance the demands of working life with the hustle and bustle of kids' commitments to school activities, sports, friends, and my own ever-changing hobbies. When our family first moved to Michigan, it was important for me and my wife to find a way to disconnect from these pressures and get out into nature as a family.
Having grown up in Florida, where mosquitos are always in abundance and the two seasons are Summer and Summer-lite, we decided that camping could be a great way to enjoy the outdoors and focus on family without the frenetic pace of modern life.
Taking our three kids on camping trips seemed like the perfect way to bond and create lasting memories. I can distinctly recall one trip in particular. At the time, my boys were in the early grades of elementary school, and my daughter was just getting ready for preschool. Before each trip I always imagined sitting around the campfire, roasting marshmallows, and telling ghost stories. And those things did happen, but when your kids have grown up in an era of smartphones, tablets, on-demand television, and constant internet access, the reality of shifting from the norm can be jarring.
The process of disconnecting also really helped to highlight how different modern childhood is from what we grew up with.
For example, on one of our first camping trips, we arrived at our campsite in a secluded state park full of tall trees, fresh air, and access to one of Michigan’s beautiful freshwater lakes. We encouraged the kids to hop out of the car and help with setting up our site. Still groggy from the long drive and clutching the tablet devices we used to keep them pacified during the trip, my middle child, Archer, slid out of the car like poured jelly while asking, "Dad, what's the Wi-Fi password here?" while staring at his tablet expectantly.
"Buddy, we're in the woods. There is no Wi-Fi," I replied, as his face morphed into an expression of confused horror.
Although this exact moment didn’t repeat itself every camping trip, similar interactions definitely have. Every trip we have taken, whether it's camping or going to another city, there are these small moments that showcase how different things are and how the expectations of their generation are so different. Like the first time we stayed in a hotel room together and happened to turn on the TV. My kids were so unfamiliar with the concept of television stations that they couldn’t fathom how a television channel could show just one thing at a time, or how programs would air on a specific schedule, with only certain things being accessible at certain times. The idea was so utterly foreign and counterintuitive to them that they kept asking me to fast forward or choose a different episode. And when a commercial came on, they didn’t understand why the skip button wouldn’t show up on the “ad.”
In a world where we're constantly connected, taking a break to unplug can be a challenging but important process, if for no other reason than to recognize how plugged-in we are most of the time, and for a generation that has never known life without accessibility and connectivity, it can be an even bigger challenge. I considered my childhood to be rather technologically connected for the time, but based on my children’s everyday experiences, you would think I grew up in some sort of isolated, non-industrial agrarian compound.
Recognizing this baseline difference and putting legitimate consideration into younger generations' expectations for connectivity and technology is an important part of preparing for a very changed future. At a certain point, I know my voice on how things are shaped will be less relevant, and it will be the collective voice of my children and their peers who are setting the demands for how technology is integrated into daily adult lives, While I wax poetic with my grandkids about "back in my day when TiVo was the hottest new technology and forests didn't have WiFi."
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