EastLife Summer 2022

LITTLE EAST
Mum’s the Word
Up until recently, I thought I had a common-or-garden14-
year-old boy at home. I mean his spoken word output had
dropped dramatically whilst his grunt output had increased
exponentially, and his deodorant use had trebled. However,
when I found him to be extra grumpy on a Saturday
afternoon, I soon discovered a keen difference between
him and his peers.
You see it was one of the first sunny days of the year and
my boy wanted to go out and play in the park; most of his
school friends live around the various edges of a park so
he tried to coordinate everyone meeting up and he was
met with resounding nos. According to his friends ‘outside
was boring’ and the only real way to hang out with your
friends was virtually, in a computer game. In that moment
my son went into what he would call ‘full boomer mode’
bemoaning a generation who would rather look at a screen
than a sky and who didn’t see the benefit of physically
being with their friends.
I started to wonder however if there was more to it than
just a generational shift; after all, we just had two years of a
global pandemic. That’s two years of telling our children to
stay at home, stay away from others, to isolate. I wondered
if that had moulded their habits more than addiction to
technology.
I still felt sad for my boy as he’s a social little bean with quite
a lot of energy to burn off and apparently chatting to mum
whilst washing dishes doesn’t cut it. Indeed my son cooped
up isn’t fun for anyone and so we had made sure he got
outside during the pandemic: walking the dog, throwing
a ball around with his dad, climbing the odd tree. But
perhaps we had been anomalies? We do live in a city rather
than rolling countryside but we still have green spaces
nearby and I balk at the idea of a future where these aren’t
filled with children playing.
Maybe parents are still being cautious, that’s
understandable, and perhaps the reluctance to go out and
play is a manifestation of that? I really hope it’s a blip. In the
meantime, I urge you to get outside with your kids. Throw
a ball, climb a tree, maybe even invent a world that’s not
made from brightly coloured pixels. Bring on the summer.
Find Dolly on Twitter @Osborneosaurus
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