While S (the male one) struggled with rain ruining his pictures and texted me asking me to let him know of any floods about to hit Vietnam’s Mekong Delta (13 dead so far), I went out for dinner with G and J, two guys I used to work with in Bangkok. G, who is here for work for a few days, has three girls and J, who is also based in Jakarta, has one rather new one.
Of course talk turned to kids and I mentioned a book I’ve been reading called Einstein Never Used Flashcards and how it was rather comforting: you don’t need to over-programme your kids and buy them educational toys that have them reading the alphabet before six months for them to turn out to be little Einsteins (and it debunks the whole Mozart for baby theory too). In fact the book argues that scheduling hour-by-hour activities before and after school and on weekends might be creating a generation of totally uncreative types who are totally inept at deciding it might be interesting to cut the whiskers off one side of the cat’s face. The book argues that talking and spending time with the munchkins, along with letting them to have time to be creative themselves (even at fatcat’s expense), should do the trick nicely.
J, who is not up to the programming stage yet, argued that that was what people used to say about the TV-generation — they’d turn out passive and unable to do much.
G, who certainly doesn’t seem the overprogramming type, complained that the whole parenting thing was becoming very divisive and competitive among his friends. Then he just looked pleased to be having a night off fatherhood. (“Once you have your first one you sometimes just sit and think of the life you used to have…”)