Watching my little boy dress for church, I’m baffled. He can’t line up the buttons. He can download a Bruno Mars song from iTunes onto his iPod, but he can’t button his shirt? I don’t get it.
More puzzling is that he can’t make his bed. He can’t line the sheet up evenly with the mattress. But on his iPod Touch, he built a rollercoaster in Minecraft. Which is lining up hundreds of little boxes – perfectly. Using a mouse.
This device is killing me. And it appears to be sucking my kids’ brainpower. It’s like they have just enough brain matter to create an account and come up with a user name – but not enough to create an outfit for school and come up with a pair of matching socks.
If you’re asking why I taught these kids how to play Temple Run instead of how to run the vacuum – well, you don’t teach kids how to use an iPod. They figure it out.
Which brings up the question: If they can figure out how to text and unlock new weapons on Zombie Highway, can’t they figure out how to use some archaic machinery?
Like the washing machine. It only has one button and doesn’t require a password. It does have a dial, but no touch screen. I explain to my boys the top sheet isn’t the sheet on top of the bed, it’s the sheet on top of you. They strip beds and load the washer. OK, let’s vacuum!
Astounding. My 10-year-old can post photographs to Instagram, but can’t figure out how to lower the vacuum handle to waist level. I watch him push the vacuum cleaner upright all the way across the living room.
Dude – download this: Put your foot on the pedal and bring the handle closer to the floor. It’s not a shopping cart. And it’s not wireless. You have to plug it in. It doesn’t automatically sync to a wireless vacuum network. It’s a machine that actually produces something other than virtual gold coins and the high score for the day.
Given I’ve seen my 7-year-old build a virtual pressure plate that triggers a dispenser to shoot arrows, I figure he’ll be good with Windex. I just underestimated how many times he’d pull the trigger. Windex dispensed at gunfire rapid speed, brings a crash course in mopping. Which only leads to a battle in the bathroom between two boys wielding a mop and a vacuum attachment.
Maybe we can help each other. I don’t know how to create a playlist. And they don’t know how to sweep. We’ll work on this. But right now I gotta deal with the bathroom – and try to make the kids see the sponge as an awesome delete function.
