Bringing up two girls eight years apart is indeed fun, but can prove to be a difficult task if not approached the right way. My elder daughter, being born in 1998 is from the 20th century and the younger one, born in 2006 is from the 21st. Though the elder one belongs to the 21st, the younger one is showing signs of belonging to the 22nd! The advancements in media and technology as well as other resources and facilities creates this difference between the two who otherwise share similar traits. My elder daughter was nearly seven when she could master a couple of games at an arcade, but on the other hand, the younger one achieved this feat at the age of five! E-learning was a part of classrooms for my elder one when she reached grade seven, but, for the younger girl, it was right from kindergarten!
But certain things still remain the same. My two girls squabble over the silliest of things, like siblings have always done over generations and I end up being the referee, trying to pacify each. Both of them share a lot of things between them and love to race each other at activities in their daily routine (and eventually end up in a fight). They love narrating stories of personal experiences and what they’ve heard about, amongst themselves. Both children love playing with dolls and jigsaw puzzles. In many ways, children will always be children and they haven’t changed.
It’s only the facilities they have access to and the environment they’re growing in that has changed. While indoor play areas and dedicated facilities for every sport weren’t very common when my eldest child was small, my younger daughter played more often in the indoor playgrounds and practises sports in specialised arenas and academies at a younger age than my eldest did.
And yes, while Google has solved all of my younger child’s queries since kindergarten, thanks to advanced internet access via WiFi and cellular data, my eldest daughter had to depend on physical resources like books, magazines and newspapers, especially as dial-up connection wasn’t always reliable. While my eldest daughter’s memories of a small age are all in photo albums and cassettes, my younger one has relatively fewer photos in albums and videos because they’re mostly in the laptop or on some external storage drive.
In eight years, technology has changed so much that the resources we need to provide children have changed dramatically. Time flies, things change, children may advance in many ways, but deep down in the heart, children are children!
- The reader is a homemaker based in Dubai.
