For the woman at the pharmacy: Expectations on Children

I agree. Academic standards are much higher for children today than they were for us growing up.

You mentioned that your children are having a difficult time breaking free from distractions enough to embrace their childhood. You might consider designating a family game night.

Yahtzee is a favorite of mine and I recommend it because each person's turn invites the other players to contribute to that person's strategy. The game is strategic in the sense that players must choose how to get the most points, but randomized in the sense that the game is different every time, and the tables can turn with every roll of the dice!

When we spoke, I had mentioned that this blog was about how to get in touch with your inner child. This is accurate, but I've set out to help readers achieve that goal in a very different way than you might expect.

I think that true happiness is related to childhood because most of us were innocent to modern distractions growing up. Everything about everything around us was new and exciting. I would spend hours under the Christmas tree just looking up at the lights and ornaments. I'm pretty sure I remember an ornament with a tiny motorized train.

I also remember a matchbox-sized wooden tricycle.

I don't know the history of it, but back then, I frankly didn't care. I thought it was the coolest thing just sitting on the window sill. As I write this, I vaguely remember the tricycle being something I wasn't supposed to touch.

If I could have used the word 'gentle' in context back then I would have told my mother that that was what I was being and that she had no reason to worry.

Most of my happy memories from childhood came from solitary play. I'm still a solitary person as desperately as I reach for companionship.

I still get whiffs of genuine happiness now and again. That's how I know it's real. I wrote a post once about the cabin that my family used to have up in Vermont, and how I loved the feeling of having cold hands and a warm ass from the stones on the hearth.

This was well after I knew about sex and the bomb and money troubles, so I know that the absence of modern distractions is not the most focused causal link to genuine happiness. I think it lies somewhere in the realm of how we regard those distractions and to what extent we let them govern our emotions.

Look for the second installment in the For the Woman at the Pharmacy series within the next couple of days.

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