Recently, When I went to the common computer at home, I found this typed on Google’s homepage.
“Is No a bad word?”
I eventually, found out that, R, my youngest daughter was the one who was in the quest for finding that answer. She hadn’t thought of asking her Mom for an answer. She went to Google with her question.
The situation that led to it, was obvious. I had heard some arguing sounds of her with her sisters and her sisters..being fed up with her constant “NO!!!” must have told her that it’s a bad word..and R, who prides herself on making the right choices…well…let’s say “Good” choices, as spelled by her teacher, must have been baffled at this revelation.
She was sure..that if she went to Mom, Mom would question her of the situation and depending on that..she would surely answer..
“Yeah..that’s a bad word”
or, she could end up being reprimanded on her behavior..
She wanted an unprejudiced answer. Mom is full of prejudices. She is going to pre judge her and not concentrate on giving her a correct answer. She trusts Google for that!
As a parent, You think that you treat your children fair and square. You know your children so much that even before a situation is presented to you…you almost know, which child would be the culprit, right?!…So much for being fair and square!!
But, children are not as naïve as you think them to be. They guess this of their parents in the slightest of ways. So, I’m happy that Google could offer itself as a solution, which is fine.
But, how can you as a parent trust it..when the actual results of the search had pointed her to websites that leads her to a list of so many bad words she wasn’t even aware of….in its quest for being unprejudiced?!!
The other day…she was doing a school homework on word sort. As I checked her homework..I wanted to point her to a mistake that she’d done.
Luckily for her…almost all words had the first letters different, so the sort was ok..but, for 2 words Candy and Cards.
She had cards listed before candy. As I pointed to her that candy preceeds cards…she went into a tantrum mode…frustrated, that her mom doesn’t understand how her teacher teaches or, how her homework is supposed to be done.
She tried explaining to me..that since both the words start with C, it doesn’t matter in what order they are placed.
She taught me that such an order is called..”Alphabetical!”
She didn’t give me a chance to talk another word.
Wondering how I can salvage the situation…Suddenly, a bulb glowed..and I thought, why not take the help of Mr. Computer. I told her …
“Let’s put all these words on the internet and ask it to sort them..and then, you can see in what order they are placed, ok?!”
Immediately, I had her attention.
She didn’t notice that I had searched for a word sorter on the internet..But, we did get a text box where we could input the words and a button that said “SORT A-Z” waiting there, to be pressed.
And Voila! The sort ended up in the sequence I had suggested.
After that..I had all her ears. I explained her that once a letter matches..we jump over to the next letter in a word, and sort them.
Lucky for me…I had the internet to help me solve my problem. And Unlucky for me..the kids, trust the internet to my wisdom.
I had come across this quote recently,
“Respect your parents..They graduated without Google”
In guess, if the kids were given a chance at the quote they would have worded it this way.
“Beware of your parents…They graduated without Google”
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