Having “The Talk” With My Five-Year-Old
At some point, it happens to every parent, but I’m not sure anyone is ever prepared for how old it will make you feel.
It’s the moment you have the discussion with your child that’s something along the lines of, “I had to walk to school barefoot five miles in the snow (both ways!), carrying the rest of the neighborhood kids on my back while juggling a stack of feral kittens.”
Or, in short: Life was rough when I was your age.
Last weekend, as our family sat at the table eating dinner, Superhero, 5, goes, “Did you know there are some people who don’t even have games on their iPad?!”
I laughed, and was like, “Do you know when I was a kid, we didn’t even have iPads?”
You should have seen the look on his face. It was as though I’d just told him he wasn’t, in fact, eating spaghetti for dinner, but diced unicorn hooves sprinkled with the remnants of all the Incredible Hulk’s ripped-up t-shirts.
“Nuh-UHHHH!,” he said, his eyes wide as saucers.
“So, bud. You know what else? When I was a kid, you couldn’t even walk around the house or anywhere else with phones. They huge, and they were attached to the wall,” I said, suddenly feeling really ancient.
“And we definitely didn’t have these (holding up my own iPhone).”
“There weren’t even buttons on the phone. We had to stick our finger in a number hole and spin it in a circle seven times to call anyone.”
“When I was a kid, we didn’t have TV channels that played cartoons all the time. We watched cartoons one morning a week, on Saturdays, and that was it.”
Then my husband chimed in: “We didn’t even have remote controls!”
Superhero was dumbfounded. “How did you change the channel?,” he asked.
“We had to walk over and turn the knob,” replied the hubs.
Superhero started cracking up, then goes, “Wait, what’s a knob?”
So yeah. You get the picture.
Much of the time I feel young at heart. But this made me feel like I needed to walk straight upstairs, put on a house coat, slippers and pink spongy curlers, then start planning the next night’s dinner — for 4:30 p.m. at Denny’s.
Getting old is brutal sometimes.
What talk with your child(ren) made you feel old? Do tell. Misery loves company!
The Wild Rumpus 
“What’s a phone booth?
A pay phone?
A phone book?”
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YES! Good ones.
(I have to admit, every time there’s a new phone book on our porch, I’m like, “really?” Isn’t this what the internet is for?)
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OH MY WORD. Me too. Stop with the phone books already.
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LOL This is too funny and true! He is just adorable! 🙂 Great Post!
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Aw, thanks so much! I can hardly wait until they’re a little older, so I can tell them how much better music was in my day! 😉
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My twelve-year-old and I recently played Trivial Pursuit. At some point, she mentioned an answer involving something plastic in 1910, and I just thought, “wow,” so I explained that when I was a child many of the things that are plastic now were actually glass. That led to quite a discussion!
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Oh man. I can’t even imagine the questions I’ll get when they’re older. I should just buy some Depends now and get it over with.
Thanks for reading!
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I love this! So cute. My son once asked me where the dinosaurs slept. I said “I don’t know”. He replied with “yes you do mom, the dinosaurs were around when you were a little kid”.
Kelly
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Hahaha, I love it, Kelly! Kids are awesome.
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Thanks so much for visiting and commenting! 🙂
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My favorite was when my now-23-year-old asked what those big square things (record albums) were. When I told her, and showed her, she goes: ‘Oh! More space for liner notes!’ (she was comparing them to CD cases). But of course kids now don’t even know what a CD case is…it just never ends, does it?
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Haha, no kidding! I’m it will only get worse as they get older.
The nice thing is that having vinyl records is cool now. Do you still have them?
Thanks for reading and commenting!
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Yes, I do! But I no longer have a turntable!
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