Time's a Changing...

Sometimes I feel like I'm about 20 years older than I actually am. 

Here is an example of a dinner conversation the other night...

Me:  "Maddie (remember she is 3 1/2), what did you do at school today?"

Maddie, rolling her eyes at me and holding her "phone" (our old cell phone):  "Um, let me text you - what is your text number?"

Nate and I, with jaws dropped, looked at each other and burst out laughing.  Our 3 year old just told me that she would TEXT me an answer about her day - while she was sitting right next to me!!  

Now, neither Nate nor I are what one would call "techie", we have old school phones - no iphone or other cool gadgets.  I have an ipod nano, but am still working on how to upload music to it...not the best at that.  We have 2 computers - one PC that is about 5 years old and slow as a turtle - truly we only have it because my itunes are on it and I have no idea how to switch that stuff over to Nate's (well, our) Macbook.  People have told us that we need an external hard drive, but I have no idea what that is.  We still communicate mainly by the old school form of talking to each other, not texting, twittering, blogging, or whatever else may be out there.  I just added texting to our cell phone plan about 5 months ago.  However, I guess that it is true that kids see everything - even when in small doses.  

It made me realize how different the world is now than when I was growing up in the 70s and 80s.  I can remember when my parents bought their first color TV - our children have no idea that there was something called black and white TV.  Their first VCR (VHS not BETA) was a huge event - now they are fairly obsolete.  Remember when "Star Wars" had the best special effects ever?!  My favorite video game is still Pac Man.  I remember a college professor introducing us to "e-mail" - I didn't use it until my junior year of college (same for "surfing the net" for the first time).  My first cell phone came when I was 25 years old - for emergency purposes only and 100 minutes lasted for a very long time.  

Here's a look at what our children already have access to - and, remember, it takes us a long time to jump on the bandwagon of a new fad - I can only imagine what other kids have access to with parents who keep up to date with new technological fads.

Here they are pretending to text each other while sitting right next to one another.

Alex on the old PC playing "starfall.com" (a great, educational website).

Not to be outdone here is Maddie on the lap top playing "starfall.com" (I never even touched a lap top until about 2 years ago!).  She already knows how to place her fingers on the keyboard correctly and open up Word and begin typing.

Here are their mini MP3 players (a Christmas gift from Grandma last year).

I should mention that later that same night Maddie told me she thought she was ready to move out on her own.  When I asked who would cook and clean and help her shower she said, "uh, mom, I can figure that out!".  What am I to do in 15 years?!? :)

Time is passing me by and I'm not sure how to catch up.

Anyone feel the same way?  Are your kids learning things faster than you can keep up with?