Let Them Be Kids
A child’s purpose is to be a child.
And here we are, all of us, fixed on the future instead of the child right in front of us.
This wouldn’t have crossed my mind before my kids were born. Now I think about it all the time. The world we live in. The world they’ve been handed.
My wife and I have tried to give them a childhood close to the one we had in the 80s and 90s. The neighbor kids come to our house. Ours go to theirs. They play in the backyard, not the street — but outdoor play isn’t optional, it’s the rule. We know what a screen does to a developing brain, so we don’t pretend the answer is zero. We aim for balance. The original Zelda. Super Mario. Strict time limits, and that’s it.
And school?
One of mine just finished first grade. The pressure to cram — the volume and pace — is what we used to see in second grade, at least. All of it is sold as preparation for a “bright future” — the best curriculum, the best shot.
What I see is a race.
Parents fully invested in a future their children haven’t reached yet — the best college, the best postgrad, the best job, the best circles. The same life they built, or a better one. All of it pointed at tomorrow. So fixed on tomorrow that they forget the kid is a kid right now. And there is nothing more important than letting a child be a child, here, in the present — because tomorrow is never guaranteed.
The machine runs on this.
Society is built to keep us as moving parts — living parts that wear down with age and get replaced by newer ones, so the economy keeps turning. In a globalized world where technology moves faster than anyone can keep up with, where everyone’s bracing for whatever AI does next, every parent is racing to give their kid the most “unfair advantage” they can buy. And in that race, we trade away the one sacred thing. We don’t let them be. We don’t let them breathe. We don’t let them be fucking kids and do kid things.
Imagination.
At home, I tell my kids that imagination comes first. Draw. Read paper books. Paint on real things. The iPad and the laptop are good for certain work, but the analog world has more to offer than we give it credit for. Or, as my kids put it: “It’s all about Imagi-naaaa-tion.”
Yes. Exactly that.
I want the wildest imagination they can come up with. That childlike curiosity gets protected at all costs, because it’s the thing that has to survive into adulthood. Imagination. Independent thought. Focus that no screen can pull apart. These don’t just matter — they win, no matter what my kids end up doing with their lives.
Here’s the part most people miss.
The bar is low, and it keeps dropping. Every year, more people trade their attention for a screen and let the machine think for them. That’s the trap. The advantage never goes to the person who hands their thinking over to the AI. It goes to the person who keeps the thinking and makes the AI work for them.
Big difference.
A child wants to be a child. Let them. Live in the present alongside them. Join them in it.
Tomorrow is never promised.