I am a mother of two young kids living in USA. In spite of all the hype related to luxuries and comforts of living abroad, my life here is tiring and monotonous. And although we have to do everything ourselves,and I mean everything literally. Still, my husband and I try our best to find time for our kids, because we realize we are the only ones they have here,except for the times when their grandma is visiting or vice versa. We take them to parks , we play with them at home, read them books and tell them silly jokes, we paint, color and watch cartoons together. But still I feel there’s something missing, their childhood doesn’t seem so much fun and easy as our childhood was,which is hard to comprehend when you look at all the activities, toys and other stuff available to kids these days. At first I thought may be its just me , maybe I am being nostalgic but I talked to some of my other friends and siblings living in Pakistan and abroad alike and they all had almost similar feelings and in fact , all of them agreed that kids are becoming more and more difficult to raise. I certainly don’t blame the kids for that, after all they are still born with a clean slate. However to me, it does seem like that the world has changed so drastically in the last 20 years or so, that it doesn’t give the kids the chance to have an innocent,content and simple childhood like we had. Life has become very demanding, even for the kids. They are growing up too fast and don’t get to be kids for too long anymore. I read an article a few days back which mentioned the same fact with statistics, it stated that kids these days do things 2 or 3 years earlier than the kids of the same age group used to do 10,15 years ago. For example ,kids 8 to 10 years old are interested in the stuff which 12 and 13-year-old kids liked a decade ago. Kids of Kindergarten are expected to have knowledge which kids of 1st and 2nd grade used to have. All the advancement in technology,the floods of information available on internet and the overexposure through television is wiping out the innocence and simplicity which were the trademarks of children in our childhood. Look around today, you will find kids going to daycare and schools as early as 2 years old and watching all kinds of tv.It breaks my heart to see how the UN_CENSORED use of internet and cable and dish tv is affecting the young minds.The fact that kids are becoming more and more materialistic and ungreatful even after getting so many more things compared to us is sad and disappointing, but then how can they not when every time they go outside they see this new wonderland of toys and gimmicks. Maybe that is part of the problem that they get too much too soon ,without actually having to do anything for it or even wanting it.Where again the blame goes to those parents who satisfy their unfulfilled childhood fantasies through their children and consider it a part of their duty to buy everything the kids dream of and they dreamed of in their childhood.

When I think of my childhood now, it feels as if it was spent in a fairyland where kids didn’t have to worry about starting school before they were 4 or 5 years old, where watching a movie was a ayyashi you could only afford once or twice in a month, where paper airplanes, boats and kites made by your parents were the most precious toys,where eating a paratha with sugar and cream was more rejoiced than eating out, where the most fun outdoor activity had nothing to do with shopping malls or buying expensive toys rather collecting stones, dried leaves, feathers and somewhat edible fallen fruit and playing out in streets was considered as safe as playing in your backyard. I really wish there was a way for me to bring back that lost world for my kids to grow up in. And, although I am a software engineer myself, I would give up internet and cable tv any day,if a world without them would return the kids their innocence, call me old-fashioned if you want to but I would like my kids to grow up treating a feast of daal,chawal,achaar and mangoes eaten on a dari  with their family more of a celebration than eating outside, call me nostalgic but I would like my kids to use paper cards more often than using ecards and sms. Okay maybe giving up internet altogether is too much 🙂 but I definitely want to find a way to show my kids a glimpse of that lost fairyland where I spent my childhood.