What does it take to become important?

It used to amaze me over the years that when asking students ( I usually taught grade 7 and or 8), what they wanted to be when they grew up, their answer often was "a famous fill-in-the-blank". By extension then, if I am not famous, I am a failure.
 I puzzled about this over the years. Why did they want to be a famous hockey player, artist, writer, movie star, etc.? Why not a successful one? Why not a talented one? Why not a respected one? Was fame the god they were chasing and not the role itself?
 In our western culture, where its not what you know, but who you know, where its better to be popular than to be right, where there's no such thing as bad publicity, how do we protect our kids from chasing fame, at the expense of a worthwhile trait?
 How do you promote celebrity in your home?
 How do you talk about celebrities?
 How do you talk about yourself and fame?
 How can we promote effort over results?

Greed is getting me down

Greed is good. Or so, it’s been said. It’s been proven wrong. Sadly, Gordon Gekko has been copied, emulated, dreamed up and re-incarnated a million times since (and a billion times before) he first walked across the silver screen. Where were the warnings before it all fell apart back in ’08?

The warnings were there and it didn’t fall apart in ’08. The Fall came long, long ago. Now money has become one of our most revered gods. Even as we struggle to get our governments, businesses and banks in line with regard to money, what are we doing to start at home? Canadian consumer debt is not getting better in fact it is getting worse. We are not taking warnings, we are losing the greed battle. Is it any better anywhere else?

Mommy's on the 'puter, Daddy's playin' World of Warcraft

This week's trend may strike a little close to home for parents. Its about us, not our kids or our culture. We have to struggle to put our addictions to technology in the background when we are parents- okay, reality is, we need to keep reality what it is whether we are parents or not. My point to ponder this week is though, we have to maintain our priorities and one major distracting agent from those priorities is our technology. Here are some news items regarding this trend. The difficult thing is, for every news-worthy story there are hundreds of other more subtle examples. Some of us can likely relate.

This article from ABC News tells a tragic story of online gaming addiction in South Korea gone terribly wrong, leading to the death of a child through neglect.

Fox News shares a similar story, this time from the US. Thankfully, the two children involved here survived, but the reasons are the same.

Rachel Mosteller writes in Parenting Magazine. 
                " Think you might be hooked? Try keeping a journal of how often you go online for
                  a week. Then assess what you’re missing out on when you do it — sleep, family 
                 time, work? Also note in your journal what was going on each time you decided to
                 sit down at the computer. Was it right after a fight with your husband? Were you 
                 bored? By figuring out the triggers that send you seeking refuge online, Moore 
                says, you can come up with alternative activities that help you deal. If you’re  
               stressed, for example, you might take your baby out for a walk."


In her eye-opening article, Mosteller posits three things moms are searching for as they spend too much time online. Those three are: information, community or escape.

What about you? Is there any danger of blogging, games, chatting, social media, or whatever your poison is, getting in the way of your priorities? Its worth a thought or more.