Now that Amazon is buying Whole Foods, will a drone fly over and drop a box of groceries at your doorstep? Are you ready for that? We're not. We're still excited over the fact that some grocery stores will not only shop for you but will deliver the bags to your door, utilizing a real honest-to-goodness human being.
The point is, as parents we're going to have to work hard to keep up with all the changes. Our children are taking all these technological marvels in stride. And by the time they're our age, who knows, we may be getting our cars, our fast food and even our medical treatment by air! Can you imagine fast food becoming "faster food"?
Brave and braver new worlds
It may be, especially during these incredible transitions, that the younger generation will have to teach us how to survive in a brave, braver and bravest new world. This educational process may become cyclical. With everything changing so fast, every generation of parents will have to rely on their kids to help them adjust to the latest inventions and innovations. One wonders if these changes will eventually come so quickly that no one will be left to explain uses and applications in understandable language - except the inventor.
father_proud_confident_serene_and_son_embrace_looking_straight_at_camera_smiling_assuredCome out of your cave
In the meantime, Mom and Dad, we have to try to keep up with a learning curve that will nearly send us careening over the cliff. It may not be the math itself that junior brings home from school that confuses us - instead it may well be the gizmo that eliminates every step in between the problem and the answer. The English textbook may be contained in a wristband with the creative writing assignment projected from the brain to the eye to a screen. The editing may be done with a blink of the eye, cutting and pasting just a thought process. The only way to be prepared for advancements will be to keep up with them incrementally. If we wait too long, we might as well stay in a cave and draw pictures with rocks.
Your kids as tutors
Dad and Mom, here's what we suggest to keep from getting lost in this maze of evolving technology. Show interest in the changes and advancements. Ask you kids to set up a home school, and have them teach you the fundamentals of the new modes of communication and emerging apps. At the very least, it will be a great way to learn together. Your kids just may seize upon this opportunity to trade places with you at least for the time that you are the student and they are the instructors.
If you're like us, we're already consulting our children on adapting an app, streaming a video or manipulating another tech wonder. Our kids are the tech gurus of a new age. Rather than push back against these advancements, we parents might as well get in step.
Tom Tozer and Bill Black are authors of "Dads2Dads: Tools for Raising Teenagers." Like them on Facebook and follow them on Twitter at Dads2Dadsllc. Contact them at tomandbill@Dads2Dadsllc.com.